Traditionally, the authorship of the Pentateuch has been ascribed to Moses. This is based on self-attribution, intertextual attribution (e.g., Joshua, the Historical Books, the Prophets), and NT attribution.
Genesis is anonymous. However, Genesis is the lead-in to the Torah, and thematic parallels between Genesis and Exodus, to take but one example, evidence their common authorship.
But on the basis of source criticism, liberals deny the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. They offer the following criteria and criticisms:
1. Nominal variants. They assign a given pericope (literary unit) to a given source based on which divine name is used (Yahweh, Elohim).
2. Narrative variants. They treat similar stories ("doublets") as different versions of the same story, based on different traditions.
3. Stylistic variants. They assign a given pericope to a given source based on stylistic differences.
4. Subject-matter. They assign a given pericope to a given source based on different subject-matter (Priestly source, Deuteronomist).
5. Internal contradictions. They draw attention to alleged discrepancies (e.g., two creation accounts, number of animals in the ark) as evidence of divergent traditions.
6. External parallels. They draw attention to apparent or actual external parallels (e.g., the Enuma Elish, Epic of Gilgamesh, Code of Hammurabi), and then attribute the canonical material to the extracanonical material.
7. Num 12:13. They invoke the immodest claim in Num 12:3 to deny Mosaic authorship of the Torah.
8. Exod 6:3. The fact that the Pentateuch is written in the third-person is sometimes cited as evidence of its amosaicity.
More importantly, Exod 6:3 is a prooftext for the Documentary Hypothesis. Since "Yahweh" is on frequent display in the patriarchal narratives, Exod 6:3 has been taken as exposing the fact that P was ignorant of the J tradition.
9. Deut 34. Since the obituary in Deut 34, as well as other alleged anachronisms, is obviously an a-Mosaic postscript, this has been invoked to justify the wholesale redaction and composite authorship of the Torah.
10. Textual criticism. Recent work on the text of the OT, Samaritan Pentateuch, and Epic of Gilgamesh has been taken to justify the application of redaction criticism to the OT, inclusive of the Pentateuch.
By way of reply:
As a general observation, the reason that Documentarians don't believe the Bible is what it claims to be is because they don't believe it could be what it claims to be; and the reason they don't believe this to be the case is because they subscribe to a secular outlook which, if true, would render many events of Scripture utterly impossible. And if the Bible cannot be a divinely inspired record of divine deeds in history, then its authors must have borrowed their ideas from the prevalent mythology of their pagan neighbors. If brief, if the Bible cannot have a supernatural source of inspiration, then, by process of elimination, it must have a naturalistic source of inspiration.
Rarely do they deign to offer up anything resembling an argument for their tremendous assumption. At most we have the barefaced assertion that secularism is unquestionably true. Hence, the Bible is unquestionable false. Specific objections to Mosaic authorship are secondary to this a priori postulate.
So the job of a Bible critic is to play the role of scholarly sleuth who "uncovers" or "discovers" the "true" sources of Scripture. And unlike your average private eye or police detective, who must make a case on the basis of empirical evidence, the Bible critic operates like a medium, graced with the psychic ability to conjure up spectral redactors that are wholly invisible to those of us sadly deficient in their clairvoyant powers of recollection. It's the best show in town since Madame Blavatsky bit the dust.
Moving onto the particulars:
1. Nominal variants:
i) Hebrew is not Esperanto. Moses did not invent an artificial language when he wrote the Pentateuch. He made use of a preexisting language, the language of his people. Hebrew is a Canaanite dialect.
Just as Greek (e.g., NT writers), Latin, Arabic, and English-speaking Christians coop pre-Christian designations to denominate the Christian deity, Moses took over pagan names to designate the true God.
ii) In the OT, God goes by a number of basal names and titles--oftentimes to lay emphasis on a particular role in relation to the world and its inhabitants. "Elohim" is his generic name, whereas "Yahweh" is his covenantal name. These, in turn, each admit a variety of compound names: El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Olam, El Gibor, Yahweh Sabaoth, Yahweh Jireh, Yahweh Shalom, Yahweh Tsidkenu, Yahweh Nissi, &c.
So different forms are used to tag different relations between God and his subjects.
2. Narrative variants.
i) We need to distinguish between similar events and similar accounts of the same event. Two events may be similar, but different. Unless you deny that history repeats itself, there is no reason to deny the historicity of the "doublets."
People, both as individuals and as social entities, are creatures of habit. They tend to act and react in the same way under the same general circumstances.
In order to explain the doublets, one need only keep two things in mind. On the one hand, the exercise of historical writing is necessarily selective; on the other hand, similar things happen--happen fairly often. Life is repetitious. Behavior is stereotypical.
Now, there are differences as well as similarities between like events. If the doublets present an artificially similar aspect, that is only because the author has chosen to select for the similarities, while having less to say about the points of dissimilarity. And that's because he thought that what they have in common is more important than the ways in which they are unalike.
ii) We need to remember that the Bible was written for the ear, not the eye. What is written for the ear contains a certain amount of built-in redundancy (e.g., Gen 24:12-27,34-38) because the eye can go back over the same page whereas the ear cannot go back over the same speech.
Form criticism and tradition criticism are concerned with the orality of Scripture—the oral traditions and process of transmission that supposedly supplied the raw materials for Scripture, while source criticism and literary criticism are concerned with the textuality of Scripture—deconstructing the editorial process by which independent sources were supposedly spliced together or the way a preexisting text underwent creative adaptation and expansion, by uncovering the internal sutures stitching up distinct sources and strata and underlying the surface structure of the document. What both of these lines of criticism fail to take into account is the aural character of Scripture. Scripture was composed for the ear, not the eye. It either consists of speech-acts that were later written down or print media that were composed to be read aloud.
The problem this poses for form criticism and literary analysis is that the modern reader is a silent reader. And this raises a number of programmatic questions I have never seen systematically investigated, must less answered, in the critical literature: is there a difference in the way we process speech and print? Is there a difference in the way a writer or speaker patterns his material for an auditor rather than a reader? Is short-term memory as retentive for speech as it is for print? Has form/tradition criticism tried to isolate the evidence for orality as distinguished from aurality? Does the way we mentally clump material differ depending on its auditory or else visual mode of input? Does the way we register imagery differ if we hear it rather than see it described on the page? What contemporary genres are most analogous to the conditioning of an ancient audience? Homiletic literature? Drama? How does the absence of their original musical setting affect our sensitivity to the internal patterning of the Psalms? What feel does a modern scholar have for the phrasing of a text whose period pronunciation and cadence are irretrievable? Isn’t the analysis of literary divisions dependent on the identification of rhythmic units? What experiments can be conducted to test possible answers?
These are just a handful of questions that come to mind. Any form of literary or source criticism that claims to arise organically out of the life-situation of the author and audience should begin by offering us a detailed psycholinguistic model of aurality and its impact on the compositional techniques of the sacred authors. Absent that, there is no reason why we should give these critics the time of day since they’ve failed to lay the preliminary groundwork that would provide even the most general preconditions the must be met before we ever get to their more specific claims.
iii) Scripture is fond of recapitulation. Bible writers like to draw our attention to recurrent patterns of divine and human conduct--especially the theme of (human) apostasy and (divine) restoration.
iv) "Doublets" actually imply common authorship rather than composite authorship, for it takes a common mind to select for these inner symmetries out of the larger amount of raw material at the disposal of the historian.
3. Stylistic variants. Style is responsive to subject-matter. The same writer varies his style according to the demands of the respective genre (see below).
4. Subject-matter. This criterion is a disguised description masquerading as an explanation. To assign priestly material to a priestly source or legal material to a Deuteronomic source is viciously circular. For there is no prior reason to assume that different subject-matter demands a special explanation or separate source. If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, then he would have ample occasion to write about the cultus and the criminal code, the history of Abraham and the Exodus, &c.
5. Internal contradictions. This is an exegetical issue rather than a source-critical issue. What is the relation of Gen 2 to Gen 1? What is the relation of clean to unclean animals? Regarding the former question, the viewpoint of Gen 1 is cosmological whereas the viewpoint of Gen 2 is anthropological. But these are complementary perspectives, and necessarily so.
Regarding the latter question, the number of unclear animals was limited to a bare reproductive unit, but because the clean animals were both sacrificial animals and foodstuff, one pair apiece would not suffice. Far from indicting the account with error, the practical logic serves to confirm its faultless veracity.
6. External parallels.
i) We need to distinguish between specious and genuine parallels. The fact that two documents may share some generic or incidental points of coincidence does not prove literary dependence. For example, poets in every time and place have recourse to the same stock of natural metaphors.
Again, law codes the world over deal with the same basic issues because human need and nature are the same the world over, viz., life, livelihood, sex, family, property, perjury, personal injury, contract law.
In brief, two documents may share something in common precisely because their commonalties are so very commonplace. It's as simple as that.
ii) We need to distinguish between inspiration and revelation. Whatever is revealed is inspired, but whatever is inspired is not necessarily revealed--in the sense of direct revelation. Inspiration controls the process, and thereby ensures the veracity of the final product, but inspiration does not confine itself to a particular mode of noetic acquisition. There are some things which can only be known by revelation, which is a subdivision of inspiration, and inspiration is, among other things, a quality-control mechanism to verify natural observation or tradition.
The traditional attribution of Mosaic authorship does not rule out possibility or probability that Moses may have had access to various sources of information for some of what he committed to writing (e.g., the genealogies? The Table of Nations?).
iii) Yet another lapse is when the source critics fail to apply their own criteria to the external sources. The late Cyrus Gordon supplies a couple of key examples: "One of the presumed characteristics of P (the Priestly Code, supposedly from the time of the Second Temple, ca. 5C BC), was a preoccupation with details such as the measurements of Noah's ark. However, while at Dropsie I reread the description of Utnapishtim's ark in the Gilgamesh Epic and observed a similar concern with detailed specifications. If this feature obliged us to attribute the Genesis account to P of the 5C, it must, I reasoned, do the same for the Babylonian account, which is absurd. I also found other absurdities in the so-called higher criticism of the Establishment. If Yahweh-Elohim owed its origin to the combination of God's name in J…with his name in E, then every Egyptian inscription mentioning the god Amon-Re must have derived the name from an A-document combined with an R-document. One might also argue the same for Ugaritic documents, which abound with divine names composed of two elements," A Scholar's Odyssey (SBL 2000), 80.
iv) Since Scripture situates the descendents of Noah in Mesopotamia, it is hardly inconsistent with the historicity of the Biblical account that Mesopotamian civilization would preserve an independent account of the flood. Indeed, it would be rather surprising if Abraham were unacquainted with some version thereof.
v) We also need to distinguish between tradition and mythology. There is nothing inherently unacceptable in the idea that Moses may have made use of Jewish tradition or family lore that was handed down from generation to generation--going back to the patriarchs or even the prediluvians. Such preexisting sources could well be historical in substance, while inspiration would correct for whatever errors crept in by process of transmission.
That is quite different from the idea that Moses made use of expurgated pagan mythology. Even if such materials could be redacted in a more orthodox direction, they would be devoid of historical value.
In addition, this is not consistent with ANE practice. As John Currid remarks, "We must question, however, whether the position that the Bible demythologizes Mesopotamian legends takes into account all the critical data bearing on the issue. First of all, the common assumption that the Hebrew stories are simplified and purified accounts of Mesopotamian legends is fallacious, for in ancient Near Eastern literature simple accounts give rise to elaborate accounts, and not vice versa. One can view this evolution from simple to complex in the many recensions of the Sumerian Babylonian flood legends. Ironically, many scholars who accept the model of the complex to the simple would then argue that the Pentateuch is the product of an evolutionary development from the simple to the complex. One cannot have it both ways.
Second, there are no examples from the ancient Near East in which myth later develops into history. Epic simply never transfigures into historical narrative. And, clearly, the creation and flood accounts in Genesis are presented as direct history with no evidence of myth," Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament (Baker 2001), 29.
vi) Besides the Epic of Gilgamesh, the most common parallel alleged to exist between Genesis and pagan mythology is the Enuma Elish. The standard treatment is by Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago 1963). However, the comparison begins to melt away like hot wax under a spotlight:
a) The derivation of tehom (Gen 1:2) from Tiamat has been challenged by linguistically qualified scholars (e.g. Currid, Kitchen, Wiseman). Even Heidel denies the etymology.
b) And even if the etymology were sound, this wouldn’t prove a thing. Our days of the week are named after Roman and Nordic gods, but that doesn’t prove that Ash Wednesday, Maundy-Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are pagan holidays--not for us. As I've said before, God didn’t invent a brand-new language for Moses to write in. Hebrew has its share of idioms and dead metaphors that reflect the cultural milieu and prehistory of the language.
c) As to the supposed parallels in narrative order, Heidel has laid these out side by side in a nifty little chart, ibid. 129. This abstract is quite impressive. Where disillusionment sets in is when the reader tries to retrace the process by which Heidel lifted these points of comparison. When you actually go back through the version of the Enuma Elish supplied by Heidel and read these references in context, the comparison falls apart. To begin with, there’s a difference between a ramshackle train of events (Enuma Elish) and a carefully orchestrated order of events (Gen 1). Narrative sequence is only significant if the narrator was mindful of the sequence and arranged the action in order to bring certain events to the fore.
d) In the Enuma Elish, the items highlighted by Heidel are just background details. They don’t frame the action. What Heidel has done is to take the framework of Gen 1, and then superimpose that back onto the Enuma Elish, seizing on some stray detail here or there that is vaguely analogous to the Biblical narrative. There is nothing in the Enuma Elish that brings these elements into high relief. From what I can tell, the Enuma Elish has no thematic plan.
It ought to be unnecessary to point out that there are stock storylines in life and literature. This follows from the fact that life is highly cyclical in character (e.g. day/night, eating/sleeping, the seasons of nature; the seasons of life, &c.). The mere fact that one plot may bear a rough resemblance to another in no way implies literary dependence, a common source, or a collective unconsciousness.
e) To take the most striking of the alleged parallels, Heidel draws attention to the existence of light before luminaries, ibid., 82,101,135. But when we look up the references, what we find is a passing reference to day and night (1:36), an ambiguous allusion to Apsu’s halo (1:68), and a depiction of Marduk as a solar deity (1:102). These scattered asides play no structural role. They are not presented as creative fiats. They don’t follow a logical sequence. They could be omitted without being missed. Heidel has simply contrived a specious parallel by means of free association.
f) Again, Heidel claims that Gen 1 and the Enuma Elish both refer to a watery chaos, ibid. 82,97,115. But Gen 1 doesn’t characterize the primeval deep as a chaotic state. Heidel is importing a connotation into the Biblical text that is absent in the original.
g) To take a final example, Heidel claims that both accounts terminate on the note of divine rest—with Gen 1 capped by a benediction, while the Enuma Elish capped by a celebration, ibid. 127-128,129. But Tablet 5 does not say that Marduk "rested" from his labors. The activity simply peters out. After that, the gods throw a big party. Of course, anything resembling a creation story will have some sort of beginning and ending to the creative activity. So that’s at most an incidental and inevitable parallel. But a bare cessation of creative activity isn’t the same things as "rest." Moses chooses that word because it anticipates the institution of the Sabbath. God is the lord of the Sabbath both by precept and practice. The real parallel is not between Genesis and the Enuma Elish, but between Gen 2:2 and Exod 20:11.
What Heidel has done is to map the thematic design of Gen 1 back onto the Enuma Elish. That design is not internal to the Babylonian document. He factors both accounts down to a lowest common denominator. If you operate at a high enough level of abstraction you can always draw a parallel between A and B. But that fails to establish any kind of genealogical relationship. Frankly, his alleged parallels are so far-fetched that they lack even a coincidental appeal.
Like many moderates, Heidel tries to salvage the dignity of Gen 1 by drawing invidious comparisons between its sublime conception and the decadent outlook of its heathen exemplar. These differences "make all similarities shrink into utter insignificance, Ibid. 140. To be sure, the comparisons are odious enough. But it’s hardly insignificant to claim that the Scriptural story of origins is a retrofitted myth borrowed from pagan tradition. It’s one thing to admit that the Psalmists and prophets many occasionally satirize the pagans by making ironic use of their own mythopoetic imagery. It’s quite another thing to claim that the foundational chapter of Bible history is not historical, but rather a bowdlerized version of a pagan creation myth. The God who called Abraham out of Babylonian idolatry would not go nosing through the same dunghill for a few narrative mushrooms.
h) This sort of source criticism doesn’t really explain the origin of the document. Unless we have independent grounds for believing that B is literarily dependent on A, appealing to A to explain the features of B is only a dodge, for we must then account for the features of A. If A could have arrived at those features independently, then why couldn’t the same hold true for B?—in which case, postulating a literary dependence on A only introduces a gratuitous complication into your explanation.
i) It defies psychological realism to suppose that exiled Jews would have canonized a Babylonian creation myth. When a nation is conquered, its citizens respond in two different ways: on one side are the collaborators who assimilate; on the other side are the patriots who resist. The idea that exiled Jews plagiarized Babylonian mythology must posit a silent revolution whereby the collaborators were able to force this heathen tale on the exiled community at large without leaving any trace of opposition in the historical record. But such an action would have provoked an intense and enduring controversy, represented by opposing schools of thought. We know that Jews split over much less than this!
In the words of O. P Robertson,
"It is somewhat remarkable to note the confident assertions made by the majority of scholars today regarding the literary productivity of this [Exilic] period in light of the meager knowledge that is actually available...This hypothetical picture is quite amazing in light of the condition of the Israelite people during its relatively brief exile. A defeated people living as a small minority in a foreign land, scattered over a vast empire throughout cities, towns, villages, and even among ruined settlements, supposedly raises up a group of anonymous authors and editors who produced the most glorious body of religious literature found in human history. According to the generally accepted critical reconstruction, these exiles produced and/or edited the Deuteronomistic history, involving the shaping of the final forms of the book of Deuteronomy and of the historical books Joshua--2 Kings; essentially reworked the whole prophetic corpus; composed the glorious prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah, along with a thorough editing of the first portion of Isaiah so that it would conform with the message of Deutero-Isaiah; developed the cultic lawcodes of the priestly school, involving the collection and codification of the worship practices intended for the then-nonexistent Jerusalem temple and its priesthood; and integrated the priestly version of the narrative of Israel's most ancient history into the revered documents of the Pentateuch. All this work is affirmed to have been accomplished during Israel's exile, despite the absence of any objective evidence that might support the theory," The Christ of the Prophets_ (P&R 2004), 285, n.7.
Other internal data include the following:
***QUOTE***
As regards the book of Genesis, it is noteworthy that various social customs and religious practices stand at odds with what developed in the time of Moses and afterward. The freedom with which the patriarchs built altars at different locations and offered sacrifices (Gen 12:7-8; 13:4,18; 22:9; 26:25; 33:20; 35:1,3,7) stands in marked contrast to the religious practices associated with Mosaic Yahwism, with is emphasis upon the role of priests and the importance of a central sanctuary.
According to Gen 20:12 Abraham married his half-sister Sarah, yet this practice is forbidden in Lev 18:9,11; 20:17; and Deut 27:22. Similarly, whereas Lev 18:18 prohibits a man from marrying two sisters, Jacob married Leah and her sister Rachel (Gen 29:15-30).
Esau’s firstborn status in Genesis is unlikely to have been invented by a Jewish writer of the exilic/postexilic period. On the contrary, this would have been a major embarrassment to Jews who viewed the Edomite as archenemies (e.g. Jer 49; Lam 4:22; Ezk 25:12-13; 35:15; Obadiah). The same argument could also be applied to the prominence given to Joseph n Genesis, over against the less important role played by his older brother Judah. If this latter tradition was created by a Judean writer, it is hard to imagine that he would have given pride of place to Joseph, from whom the Ephraimites, associated with the northern kingdom of Israel, claimed a royal lineage.
Whereas the preceding comments have focused on Genesis, A. P. Ross makes a similar point regarding the traditions concerning the tabernacle. If these traditions were created in the exilic or postexilic period, it “yields the improbable scenario in which the nation in exile longs to return to their land but instead receives instructions to build a portable shrine for the desert.”
Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch, T. Alexander & D. Baker, eds. (IVP 2003), 66.
***END-QUOTE***
7. Num 12:3. One danger for readers conditioned by the psychological novel is to treat a remark like Num 12:3 as if it were a clinical profile of his psychological make-up. But we need to guard against reading Scripture through a Freudian or Jamesian lens. The Biblical narrator does not mirror our modern obsession with the subliminal motives and interior moods of the character.
The disclaimer of v3 serves a dramatic function. It is on account of his self-effacing disposition that Moses is vulnerable to challenge by more ambitious figures (vv1-2) and must rely on God’s intervention to vindicate his leadership (vv4ff.). Num 12:3 picks up on Exod 3-4, where Moses resisted the prophetic call. Without this set up in v3, the whole episode falls apart.
The presence of anachronistic place-names in Genesis has also been raised in objection to Mosaic authorship. Actually, this would be more evidence for Mosaic authorship. Moses is writing hundreds of years after the events recorded in Genesis. He is writing about the past from his own historical vantage-point. So you would expect him to use current designations. If I were living in New York in the 21C, and you were asking me for directions, would I mail you a 1950 edition of a New York city street map?
I’d add that I see nothing wrong with the idea that someone like, say, Ezra, might have updated some archaic place-names, just as the scribes may have modernized certain obsolete grammatical forms from time to time.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
The Volokh Conspiracy - Churches and International Human rights.
This is a withering factual expose' of the moral idiocy of the mainline Protestant Church.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Religion & evil
There are different ways of classifying the major religions of the world. Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism are more otherworldly, while western religions like Islam and Judaism are worldlier.
One way of explaining the various religions of the world is to see them as offering and modeling different problem-solving strategies in relation to the problem of evil. Because they define the problem differently, they define the answer differently.
1. Eastern religion
For eastern religions, the sensible world is the problem. There is something wrong with the world.
i) In Hinduism, the problem with the world is that the world is "maya." The world is in some way unreal, whether illusory or delusive. If problem is epistemic and metaphysical, then the solution is psychological. If we can't change the world, we can change our economic relations.
The solution, then, is to achieve a state of enlightenment in which we penetrate the veil of perception and dissolve the alienation between the human subject and mundane object.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to see the world through the lens of Scripture.
ii) In Buddhism, the problem with the world is that the world is a source of frustration. We either can’t have what we want, or we lose what we love. If the problem is epistemic and emotional, then the solution is, again, psychological.
The solution, then, is to achieve a state of detachment. If we learn to be dispassionate, then we will no longer be at the mercy of our wayward passions.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to cultivate godly emotions, and leave our emotional healing to heavenly compensations.
In both these cases I’m talking about the more philosophical, and not the folk forms, of Eastern religion. The metaphysical problem in Hinduism gives rise to the moral problem in Buddhism. Because the sensible world is fleeting (Hinduism), it is a source of frustration (Buddhism), for the object of desire is fleeting. Change is the only constant.
And in both cases, life, not death, is a problem, for death merely reinitiates the life-cycle (reincarnation).
There are, of course, disagreements over the interpretation of "maya" in Indian thought. There can be no definitive answer, for Hindu and Buddhist dogmas derive from the subjective interpretation of mystical, ineffable, introspective states.
2. Western religion
For western religions, the sensible world is basically good. But there is something wrong with our economic relations.
i) In Islam, the problem is not so much with our morality, but our mortality. The problem is biological. The world is good, but we are mortal. Some day we each must take our leave of the sensible world. And when we depart the world, we face the peril of divine judgment.
The solution, then, is for the afterlife to be an extension and intensification of the world below. And the means of achieving paradise is through good works, viz., prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, alms-giving, jihad and martyrdom.
ii) In Judaism, the world is basically good, but we are sinners. If problem is ethical, then the solution is ethical--or even political. We must be devout law-keepers, and transform the world-at-large by our exemplary conduct.
Here I’m talking about Rabbinical Judaism, and not OT Yahwism, which was a religion of grace.
iii) Because they’re cognate, Christianity has the most in common with Islam and Judaism.
The world is basically good, but we are mortal, and we are mortal because we are sinners. Our alienation is not so much with the world, but with ourselves, and our neighbors, and our God.
If problem is spiritual, then the solution is spiritual. As sinners, we cannot save ourselves from ourselves, for we are the source of the problem, and not, therefore, the solution.
The problem is not with the world, and so the answer is not to be otherworldly. Even if we didn’t die, we would live as sinners. So the solution must come from God alone.
3. Occultism
In the occult, which is a global phenomenon, the world is the problem, and the problem with the world is that we are at the mercy of the future. The solution is to control the outcome, by either knowing the future (fortune-telling), and thereby dodging whatever bullets are coming our way--or else to directly manipulate the future (witchcraft), and thereby become the masters of our own destiny. Fortune-telling is reactive, whereas witchcraft is proactive.
As such, occultism is kin to fatalism. The trick is to either escape our fate or bend our fate to our own advantage.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to live by the Bible, and leave the outcome to God's good providence.
One way of explaining the various religions of the world is to see them as offering and modeling different problem-solving strategies in relation to the problem of evil. Because they define the problem differently, they define the answer differently.
1. Eastern religion
For eastern religions, the sensible world is the problem. There is something wrong with the world.
i) In Hinduism, the problem with the world is that the world is "maya." The world is in some way unreal, whether illusory or delusive. If problem is epistemic and metaphysical, then the solution is psychological. If we can't change the world, we can change our economic relations.
The solution, then, is to achieve a state of enlightenment in which we penetrate the veil of perception and dissolve the alienation between the human subject and mundane object.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to see the world through the lens of Scripture.
ii) In Buddhism, the problem with the world is that the world is a source of frustration. We either can’t have what we want, or we lose what we love. If the problem is epistemic and emotional, then the solution is, again, psychological.
The solution, then, is to achieve a state of detachment. If we learn to be dispassionate, then we will no longer be at the mercy of our wayward passions.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to cultivate godly emotions, and leave our emotional healing to heavenly compensations.
In both these cases I’m talking about the more philosophical, and not the folk forms, of Eastern religion. The metaphysical problem in Hinduism gives rise to the moral problem in Buddhism. Because the sensible world is fleeting (Hinduism), it is a source of frustration (Buddhism), for the object of desire is fleeting. Change is the only constant.
And in both cases, life, not death, is a problem, for death merely reinitiates the life-cycle (reincarnation).
There are, of course, disagreements over the interpretation of "maya" in Indian thought. There can be no definitive answer, for Hindu and Buddhist dogmas derive from the subjective interpretation of mystical, ineffable, introspective states.
2. Western religion
For western religions, the sensible world is basically good. But there is something wrong with our economic relations.
i) In Islam, the problem is not so much with our morality, but our mortality. The problem is biological. The world is good, but we are mortal. Some day we each must take our leave of the sensible world. And when we depart the world, we face the peril of divine judgment.
The solution, then, is for the afterlife to be an extension and intensification of the world below. And the means of achieving paradise is through good works, viz., prayer, pilgrimage, fasting, alms-giving, jihad and martyrdom.
ii) In Judaism, the world is basically good, but we are sinners. If problem is ethical, then the solution is ethical--or even political. We must be devout law-keepers, and transform the world-at-large by our exemplary conduct.
Here I’m talking about Rabbinical Judaism, and not OT Yahwism, which was a religion of grace.
iii) Because they’re cognate, Christianity has the most in common with Islam and Judaism.
The world is basically good, but we are mortal, and we are mortal because we are sinners. Our alienation is not so much with the world, but with ourselves, and our neighbors, and our God.
If problem is spiritual, then the solution is spiritual. As sinners, we cannot save ourselves from ourselves, for we are the source of the problem, and not, therefore, the solution.
The problem is not with the world, and so the answer is not to be otherworldly. Even if we didn’t die, we would live as sinners. So the solution must come from God alone.
3. Occultism
In the occult, which is a global phenomenon, the world is the problem, and the problem with the world is that we are at the mercy of the future. The solution is to control the outcome, by either knowing the future (fortune-telling), and thereby dodging whatever bullets are coming our way--or else to directly manipulate the future (witchcraft), and thereby become the masters of our own destiny. Fortune-telling is reactive, whereas witchcraft is proactive.
As such, occultism is kin to fatalism. The trick is to either escape our fate or bend our fate to our own advantage.
From a Christian standpoint, the solution is to live by the Bible, and leave the outcome to God's good providence.
Fright-night
The popularity of C. S. Lewis and Cordwainer Smith have made SF a favorite genre for many Christians. Yet, in many respects, the horror genre intersects with the Christian worldview in a way that the SF genre does not.
Why is it, then, that the horror genre has failed to capture the Christian imagination? Perhaps they find the subject-matter something best to be avoided. In addition, the horror genre is a dumping ground for a good deal of decadent material--B-movies, slash-'um-ups, heaving bosoms and the like.
Still, some of the occult themes of the horror genre overlap or originate in Scripture and church history.
The area of overlaps consists in a couple of sometimes interrelated themes: possession and the Antichrist.
Although most horror flicks are campy, trashy exercises in vicarious sadism and voyeurism, there are a handful which achieve a certain distinction in the handling of their subject-matter. It is not, perhaps, coincidental that some of these began life as novels (Dracula, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby). They had a certain literary distinction which, in turn, jumpstarted the screenplay.
The classic film on the subject of possession is, of course, The Exorcist. The degree to which this was effective was the degree to which it was orthodox. It took seriously the traditional Roman Catholic theology of possession and exorcism seriously. Although the viewpoint was Roman Catholic, the underlying ideas are firmly founded in Scripture.
The film was respectful of the priestly vocation. And it explored the tension between tradition and modernity. Fr. Merrin, the senior priest and exorcist, represents traditional piety. By contrast, Fr. Karras, the junior priest, trained in modern-day psychiatry, is a sceptic. However, as he's drawn ever further into this case, secular explanations fail him.
The film also benefited from an outstanding cast (Blair, Burstyn, Miller, von Sydow). The film does not make for easy viewing, and no one is duty-bound to watch it. But it addresses a genuine phenomenon of religious significance.
The treatment of the Antichrist theme takes to basic forms. The more immediate is the direct treatment of the Antichrist. The classic film on this subject is, of course, Rosemary's Baby, although The Omen, while not at quite the same artistic level, is also a quality production, with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick in the lead roles.
And idea of the Antichrist has its roots in both the NT and the OT. It surfaces in the prophecies of Dan 7, 9,11-12 but it has a more submerged prehistory in the idea of a serpentine seed, which has its inception in the Protevangelion (Gen 3:15), and moves up through Gen 49:17, Deut 33:22 and Jer 8:16-17. The theme is picked up again in the Olivet Discourse (Mt 24:15,24), Paul's prophecy of the man of sin (2 Thes 2), and the Johannine writings (1 Jn 2:18; 4:3,6; Rev 13).
In cinematic treatments, such as the above, the advent of the Antichrist is facilitated by a diabolical impregnation. This has its roots in the medieval notion of the incubus or succubus, which has, in turn, more ancient antecedents. (Just consult the literature on "Old Hag syndrome".)
Although Scripture is not explicit on this point, the idea is consistent with the traditional interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 (cf. 1 Pet 3:19-20; 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6-7).
This interpretation is often though to be ruled out on account of Mt 22:29-30 (par. Mk 12:24-25; Lk 20:34-36). However, this has reference to the heavenly angels, not the fallen angels. Inasmuch as angels are evidently able to assume corporeal (e.g., Gen 19:1-3), they may, for all we know, be capable of carnal congress as well, although this would, of course, represent an unnatural abuse of their natural powers.
A mediating position, which, in fact, covers both of the cinematic themes under consideration, is the idea that the "sons of God" were men possessed of the devil. In Jewish and medieval lore, the lineage of the Antichrist is, in fact, associated Gen 6 and the origin of the Nephilim or "fallen ones."
An indirect treatment of the Antichrist theme is to center the story on a character that exemplifies that figure. And, in this respect, the character of Dracula is the most frequent vehicle. Of course, there are an inexhaustible number of B-movies about vampires, but a few achieve artistic distinction: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola, Gary Oldman); Count Dracula (BBC miniseries, Louis Jourdan); Count Dracula (Jess Franco, Christopher Lee);
Nosferatu: The Vampyre (Herzog, Kinski).
Dracula is, in several respects, a type of the Antichrist. He is in league with the dark side. He confers eternal life on his favored victims. He confers eternal life by allowing them to drink his blood. He takes a consort or harem, in a travesty of Christ and the church.
The literary character of Dracula is a product of the Romantic era, for whom the Devil was their exemplary antihero. This aspect is showcased by the likes of Gary Oldman and Louis Jordan.
The Coppola adaptation is distinctive for introducing the count as a Christian apostate. In a semi-historic prelude, it draws attention to career of Vlad the Impaler as a Crusader and a one-time communicant of the Rumanian Orthodox Church, before he turned against God to embrace the dark side.
By contrast, Nosferatu presents Dracula as a truly ghoulish and bestial remnant of his long lost humanity. This is a monster, both inside and out--reminiscent of final fate of Milton's archfiend. He brings a retinue of plague-infested rats wherever he goes.
On a mundane level, the shape-shifting, gravity-defiant powers of the vampire defy all scientific sense. But on another plane, their preternatural powers are supposed to be paranormal, for these are supernatural creatures, trafficking with evil spirits. And this is why they are repelled by sacred objects (e.g., the crucifix, holy water).
For a chance of pace, Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers is a brilliant spoof on the whole vampiric genre, featuring a swishy bloodsucker and a hilarious ballroom scene--among other things.
This point is not that these vampiric depictions are at all realistic in the representational sense. They are not descriptive of reality, but rather, palpable emblems of an often impalpable presence in the world--one which is generally known only by its effect. Rarely is the veil pulled back to reveal the ultimate agent. And that, indeed, is why it is called the "occult."
Contemporary efforts to domesticate and gentrify the occult (e.g., Harry Potter, Brimstone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Forever Knight, Crossing Over, horoscopes, psychic hotlines) are a softening up device to prep the general public for a neopagan renaissance. Dark Shadows, a cult TV-series, was the tip of the spear.
On the other hand, a movie like Hellboy makes subversive and satirical use of occult cliches to channel a redemptive message. Opportunism can cut either way.
Why is it, then, that the horror genre has failed to capture the Christian imagination? Perhaps they find the subject-matter something best to be avoided. In addition, the horror genre is a dumping ground for a good deal of decadent material--B-movies, slash-'um-ups, heaving bosoms and the like.
Still, some of the occult themes of the horror genre overlap or originate in Scripture and church history.
The area of overlaps consists in a couple of sometimes interrelated themes: possession and the Antichrist.
Although most horror flicks are campy, trashy exercises in vicarious sadism and voyeurism, there are a handful which achieve a certain distinction in the handling of their subject-matter. It is not, perhaps, coincidental that some of these began life as novels (Dracula, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby). They had a certain literary distinction which, in turn, jumpstarted the screenplay.
The classic film on the subject of possession is, of course, The Exorcist. The degree to which this was effective was the degree to which it was orthodox. It took seriously the traditional Roman Catholic theology of possession and exorcism seriously. Although the viewpoint was Roman Catholic, the underlying ideas are firmly founded in Scripture.
The film was respectful of the priestly vocation. And it explored the tension between tradition and modernity. Fr. Merrin, the senior priest and exorcist, represents traditional piety. By contrast, Fr. Karras, the junior priest, trained in modern-day psychiatry, is a sceptic. However, as he's drawn ever further into this case, secular explanations fail him.
The film also benefited from an outstanding cast (Blair, Burstyn, Miller, von Sydow). The film does not make for easy viewing, and no one is duty-bound to watch it. But it addresses a genuine phenomenon of religious significance.
The treatment of the Antichrist theme takes to basic forms. The more immediate is the direct treatment of the Antichrist. The classic film on this subject is, of course, Rosemary's Baby, although The Omen, while not at quite the same artistic level, is also a quality production, with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick in the lead roles.
And idea of the Antichrist has its roots in both the NT and the OT. It surfaces in the prophecies of Dan 7, 9,11-12 but it has a more submerged prehistory in the idea of a serpentine seed, which has its inception in the Protevangelion (Gen 3:15), and moves up through Gen 49:17, Deut 33:22 and Jer 8:16-17. The theme is picked up again in the Olivet Discourse (Mt 24:15,24), Paul's prophecy of the man of sin (2 Thes 2), and the Johannine writings (1 Jn 2:18; 4:3,6; Rev 13).
In cinematic treatments, such as the above, the advent of the Antichrist is facilitated by a diabolical impregnation. This has its roots in the medieval notion of the incubus or succubus, which has, in turn, more ancient antecedents. (Just consult the literature on "Old Hag syndrome".)
Although Scripture is not explicit on this point, the idea is consistent with the traditional interpretation of Gen 6:1-4 (cf. 1 Pet 3:19-20; 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6-7).
This interpretation is often though to be ruled out on account of Mt 22:29-30 (par. Mk 12:24-25; Lk 20:34-36). However, this has reference to the heavenly angels, not the fallen angels. Inasmuch as angels are evidently able to assume corporeal (e.g., Gen 19:1-3), they may, for all we know, be capable of carnal congress as well, although this would, of course, represent an unnatural abuse of their natural powers.
A mediating position, which, in fact, covers both of the cinematic themes under consideration, is the idea that the "sons of God" were men possessed of the devil. In Jewish and medieval lore, the lineage of the Antichrist is, in fact, associated Gen 6 and the origin of the Nephilim or "fallen ones."
An indirect treatment of the Antichrist theme is to center the story on a character that exemplifies that figure. And, in this respect, the character of Dracula is the most frequent vehicle. Of course, there are an inexhaustible number of B-movies about vampires, but a few achieve artistic distinction: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola, Gary Oldman); Count Dracula (BBC miniseries, Louis Jourdan); Count Dracula (Jess Franco, Christopher Lee);
Nosferatu: The Vampyre (Herzog, Kinski).
Dracula is, in several respects, a type of the Antichrist. He is in league with the dark side. He confers eternal life on his favored victims. He confers eternal life by allowing them to drink his blood. He takes a consort or harem, in a travesty of Christ and the church.
The literary character of Dracula is a product of the Romantic era, for whom the Devil was their exemplary antihero. This aspect is showcased by the likes of Gary Oldman and Louis Jordan.
The Coppola adaptation is distinctive for introducing the count as a Christian apostate. In a semi-historic prelude, it draws attention to career of Vlad the Impaler as a Crusader and a one-time communicant of the Rumanian Orthodox Church, before he turned against God to embrace the dark side.
By contrast, Nosferatu presents Dracula as a truly ghoulish and bestial remnant of his long lost humanity. This is a monster, both inside and out--reminiscent of final fate of Milton's archfiend. He brings a retinue of plague-infested rats wherever he goes.
On a mundane level, the shape-shifting, gravity-defiant powers of the vampire defy all scientific sense. But on another plane, their preternatural powers are supposed to be paranormal, for these are supernatural creatures, trafficking with evil spirits. And this is why they are repelled by sacred objects (e.g., the crucifix, holy water).
For a chance of pace, Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers is a brilliant spoof on the whole vampiric genre, featuring a swishy bloodsucker and a hilarious ballroom scene--among other things.
This point is not that these vampiric depictions are at all realistic in the representational sense. They are not descriptive of reality, but rather, palpable emblems of an often impalpable presence in the world--one which is generally known only by its effect. Rarely is the veil pulled back to reveal the ultimate agent. And that, indeed, is why it is called the "occult."
Contemporary efforts to domesticate and gentrify the occult (e.g., Harry Potter, Brimstone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Forever Knight, Crossing Over, horoscopes, psychic hotlines) are a softening up device to prep the general public for a neopagan renaissance. Dark Shadows, a cult TV-series, was the tip of the spear.
On the other hand, a movie like Hellboy makes subversive and satirical use of occult cliches to channel a redemptive message. Opportunism can cut either way.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
The force be with you!
The original Star Wars trilogy has just been reissued in the crisp DVD format. I say "original," because George Lucas chose to expand his trilogy into a hexology.
The Star Wars franchise is important as a pop icon and cultural cliché. The Greeks had their mythology, and we have ours. For better or worse, this is a collective mirror of our national ethos.
I saw Star Wars as a teenager, which is no doubt the best time in life to see it. That makes it an interesting point of reference as I write about it at a later stage in life. In watching it again, I'm watching myself watching it. It reminds me of how I felt the first time I saw it, so that I can compare notes between the younger and older versions of me. To some extent, then, I'm looking at it through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia, not that I'd care to be a teenager again, although it would be nice to feel like one! Perhaps this skews my outlook. But, of course, the effect of art lies in the dialectical relation between the object of art and the mood of the viewer--in what we bring to the experience as much as what we take from it.
On the face of it, the cult popularity of the movie is hard to account for. It has a paper-thin plot which it races through at warp-speed. However, the film is deceptively simple. For George Lucas had collaborated with Joseph Campbell on the screenplay. Campbell, along with Jung, Eliade, Frye, and Frazer before them, did much to popularize comparative mythology and the notion of the monomyth. As a consequence, the screenplay is booby-trapped with a number of subliminal tripwires.
The hero is Luke Skywalker. Note the name of the third Evangelist. Luke exemplifies many things at once: rites of passage, the male loner, the reluctant warrior, the holy fool, St. George, the oedipal orphan.
"Old Ben," or Obi-wan, is a mentor, but more than a mentor. He dresses like a monk and lives like a hermit. He bears a patriarchal name. And the shade of Obi-wan bears a nimbic aura.
The desert is a sacred place, a place of law, temptation, refuge, and judgment--the place of Moses and Israel, Jesus, John the Baptist, and St. Anthony. Luke must make a pilgrimage into the desert to meet with him.
The Death Star, with its endless tunnel-system, is like the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Obi-wan is a knight. And a knight is a crusader. Luke must be initiated into the Jedi knighthood, which is a generic variant on the order of the Templars. The Templars were the military wing of monastic piety. Obi-wan lays down his life to buy time for the escape party.
Han Solo, the crusty, streetwise rogue, is a worldly foil to Luke's holy fool. Despite of, or because of his innocent simplicity, Luke triumphs over all odds. Luke is not only the savior of Leia and the ancien order, but also Han Solo's savior, who is cynical, but not beyond reach of redemption.
Luke must rescue a captive princess. This is the Georgian motif. In Christian iconography, Leia would be the church, and Vader would be the Dragon. So the screenplay unites universal archetypes with distinctive chivalric motifs.
The story itself belongs to the quest genre, which plays on the pilgrim motif.
Of course, the worldview of the movie is far from Christian. The "force" is not a personal God, but a throwback to the anima mundi.
By common consent, The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the trilogy--indeed, the best of the entire franchise thus far.
This is, in part, because Lucas turned the director's chair over to Irvin Kershner, who has a keener eye for visual flow, and the screenplay to Leigh Brackett, a seasoned SF writer.
The Empire achieves much of its dramatic power through the skillful interplay of open space and space enclosed, to foster a sense of claustrophobia and liberation--from the lair of the Wampa, the asteroid, the dark planet of Dagobah, Yoda's hut, the underground cave on Dagobah, Solo's living entombment, and the inner spiral of Cloud City.
The Empire also devotes a fair amount of time unpacking the "force" in light of Buddhist ethics. This will create a problem for Lucas as the franchise continues. To the extent that conflict/resolution is the essence of drama, emotional detachment is antithetical to true drama. This is a key reason why Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones are so flat and static.
Why did Lucas choose to go the Buddhist route? Well, he seemed to feel that his epic vision needed some degree of a transcendental dimension. Pure secularism would be too confining. And for many liberals, religion, or better yet, "spirituality" is fine as long as it isn't Christian. It can be Hindu, Buddhist, Cabalist, American Indian--even Islamic, but never Christian.
Lucas came of age during the Sixties, and eastern religion was part of the counterculture. Its pacifism fit in with the anti-war movement.
Also, film is a mass medium, and Buddhism, which is reputed to be undogmatic, was probably felt to be the most inoffensive form of spirituality.
In addition, there was really no where to go with a character like Skywalker, or the actor who played him. Hamill did well enough at projecting the lust and wanderlust of a young man, but he lacked the star-power and staying-power of a major stage presence, and once your coming-of-age character has come-of-age, what then? Harrison Ford was able to make a real career for himself, because he had more maturity to work with, but not as Han Solo, for Solo is a foil, and the foil is only as good as the lead.
A film like The Phantom Menace is almost a stereotype of everything that can go wrong with a SF flick--a film devoid of plot, passion, characterization, or insight; a film which is strictly a vehicle for the latest line of gismos and gadgets.
Yet that is not quite fair to Lucas, for Lucas is a landscape painter rather than a portrait painter. He has a genuine knack for imagining the unimaginable. But pretty pictures which illustrate absolutely nothing are not enough to sustain a feature-length film. His eyes are bigger than his ideas.
Lucas never had much to say, and he said it all in the first two installments. Even then he was leaning on Joseph Campbell and Leigh Brackett to fill form with content.
He had shot his bolt by The Return of the Jedi, which looks like an outtake reel. He apparently felt the need to round out the trilogy, and this exercise in feature-length padding was the filler. It substitutes sentimentality for sentiment and melodrama for drama. Even his visual imagination falters, for there's no story to inspire the visuals.
In rising to the challenge of the new technology, The Phantom Menace has a few memorable moments, but because there is nothing to attach them to, they fade from memory--like a sunset or a fireworks display.
The Attack of the Clones was somewhat better. The clunky love-story was an effortful effort to recapture the effortless romance of the original Star Wars installment, while the arbitrary plot lacks the linear impetus of the original as well. Yet some of the visuals were really arresting. But this only served to underscore the disparity between eye, ear, heart, and mind. Looks without a commensurate outlook are a feast for the eyes, but a fasting-day for the soul.
Campbell was half-right: there is a monomyth, only it is not a myth, but the Biblical history of creation, fall, and redemption. That is the archetypal story--of which all other stories are lightly disguised versions and variations.
The Star Wars franchise is important as a pop icon and cultural cliché. The Greeks had their mythology, and we have ours. For better or worse, this is a collective mirror of our national ethos.
I saw Star Wars as a teenager, which is no doubt the best time in life to see it. That makes it an interesting point of reference as I write about it at a later stage in life. In watching it again, I'm watching myself watching it. It reminds me of how I felt the first time I saw it, so that I can compare notes between the younger and older versions of me. To some extent, then, I'm looking at it through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia, not that I'd care to be a teenager again, although it would be nice to feel like one! Perhaps this skews my outlook. But, of course, the effect of art lies in the dialectical relation between the object of art and the mood of the viewer--in what we bring to the experience as much as what we take from it.
On the face of it, the cult popularity of the movie is hard to account for. It has a paper-thin plot which it races through at warp-speed. However, the film is deceptively simple. For George Lucas had collaborated with Joseph Campbell on the screenplay. Campbell, along with Jung, Eliade, Frye, and Frazer before them, did much to popularize comparative mythology and the notion of the monomyth. As a consequence, the screenplay is booby-trapped with a number of subliminal tripwires.
The hero is Luke Skywalker. Note the name of the third Evangelist. Luke exemplifies many things at once: rites of passage, the male loner, the reluctant warrior, the holy fool, St. George, the oedipal orphan.
"Old Ben," or Obi-wan, is a mentor, but more than a mentor. He dresses like a monk and lives like a hermit. He bears a patriarchal name. And the shade of Obi-wan bears a nimbic aura.
The desert is a sacred place, a place of law, temptation, refuge, and judgment--the place of Moses and Israel, Jesus, John the Baptist, and St. Anthony. Luke must make a pilgrimage into the desert to meet with him.
The Death Star, with its endless tunnel-system, is like the labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Obi-wan is a knight. And a knight is a crusader. Luke must be initiated into the Jedi knighthood, which is a generic variant on the order of the Templars. The Templars were the military wing of monastic piety. Obi-wan lays down his life to buy time for the escape party.
Han Solo, the crusty, streetwise rogue, is a worldly foil to Luke's holy fool. Despite of, or because of his innocent simplicity, Luke triumphs over all odds. Luke is not only the savior of Leia and the ancien order, but also Han Solo's savior, who is cynical, but not beyond reach of redemption.
Luke must rescue a captive princess. This is the Georgian motif. In Christian iconography, Leia would be the church, and Vader would be the Dragon. So the screenplay unites universal archetypes with distinctive chivalric motifs.
The story itself belongs to the quest genre, which plays on the pilgrim motif.
Of course, the worldview of the movie is far from Christian. The "force" is not a personal God, but a throwback to the anima mundi.
By common consent, The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the trilogy--indeed, the best of the entire franchise thus far.
This is, in part, because Lucas turned the director's chair over to Irvin Kershner, who has a keener eye for visual flow, and the screenplay to Leigh Brackett, a seasoned SF writer.
The Empire achieves much of its dramatic power through the skillful interplay of open space and space enclosed, to foster a sense of claustrophobia and liberation--from the lair of the Wampa, the asteroid, the dark planet of Dagobah, Yoda's hut, the underground cave on Dagobah, Solo's living entombment, and the inner spiral of Cloud City.
The Empire also devotes a fair amount of time unpacking the "force" in light of Buddhist ethics. This will create a problem for Lucas as the franchise continues. To the extent that conflict/resolution is the essence of drama, emotional detachment is antithetical to true drama. This is a key reason why Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones are so flat and static.
Why did Lucas choose to go the Buddhist route? Well, he seemed to feel that his epic vision needed some degree of a transcendental dimension. Pure secularism would be too confining. And for many liberals, religion, or better yet, "spirituality" is fine as long as it isn't Christian. It can be Hindu, Buddhist, Cabalist, American Indian--even Islamic, but never Christian.
Lucas came of age during the Sixties, and eastern religion was part of the counterculture. Its pacifism fit in with the anti-war movement.
Also, film is a mass medium, and Buddhism, which is reputed to be undogmatic, was probably felt to be the most inoffensive form of spirituality.
In addition, there was really no where to go with a character like Skywalker, or the actor who played him. Hamill did well enough at projecting the lust and wanderlust of a young man, but he lacked the star-power and staying-power of a major stage presence, and once your coming-of-age character has come-of-age, what then? Harrison Ford was able to make a real career for himself, because he had more maturity to work with, but not as Han Solo, for Solo is a foil, and the foil is only as good as the lead.
A film like The Phantom Menace is almost a stereotype of everything that can go wrong with a SF flick--a film devoid of plot, passion, characterization, or insight; a film which is strictly a vehicle for the latest line of gismos and gadgets.
Yet that is not quite fair to Lucas, for Lucas is a landscape painter rather than a portrait painter. He has a genuine knack for imagining the unimaginable. But pretty pictures which illustrate absolutely nothing are not enough to sustain a feature-length film. His eyes are bigger than his ideas.
Lucas never had much to say, and he said it all in the first two installments. Even then he was leaning on Joseph Campbell and Leigh Brackett to fill form with content.
He had shot his bolt by The Return of the Jedi, which looks like an outtake reel. He apparently felt the need to round out the trilogy, and this exercise in feature-length padding was the filler. It substitutes sentimentality for sentiment and melodrama for drama. Even his visual imagination falters, for there's no story to inspire the visuals.
In rising to the challenge of the new technology, The Phantom Menace has a few memorable moments, but because there is nothing to attach them to, they fade from memory--like a sunset or a fireworks display.
The Attack of the Clones was somewhat better. The clunky love-story was an effortful effort to recapture the effortless romance of the original Star Wars installment, while the arbitrary plot lacks the linear impetus of the original as well. Yet some of the visuals were really arresting. But this only served to underscore the disparity between eye, ear, heart, and mind. Looks without a commensurate outlook are a feast for the eyes, but a fasting-day for the soul.
Campbell was half-right: there is a monomyth, only it is not a myth, but the Biblical history of creation, fall, and redemption. That is the archetypal story--of which all other stories are lightly disguised versions and variations.
Friday, September 24, 2004
Frodo lives!
Almost everyone has an opinion about LOTR, so I might as well weigh in. Some films are important, not because they're great movies, but because their popularity says something about the state of the general culture. The LOTR trilogy will likely attain at least the same iconic status in the general culture as Star Trek and Star Wars. Tolkien already enjoyed a cult following, and the cinematic popularization of his literary magnum opus will only serve to expand and enhance that profile. Finally, many members of the Christian community across a wide confessional spectrum have embraced both the books and movies as an artistic touchstone of the Christian worldview.
Jackson's adaptation is remarkably successful in winning both critical and popular acclaim. Many movies score big at the box office, but are panned by the critics. Yet the LOTR is about as popular with the critics as it is with the general public.
There is a dispute over which is the best of the three. In my opinion, The Fellowship of the Ring is the best, because it has a lean and clean storyline. Once the fellowship disbands, we lose some of the narrative cohesion. This, of course, is true of most movies, but most movies don't begin with this unifying principle, so its loss is more keenly felt.
To be sure, it is more than possible to make a virtue of parallel storylines. The Odyssey is the paradigm-case. However, Homer was working backwards from multiple points of separation to a steady convergence. So his technique had its own elegant progression. But the scene changes in the Two Towers and Return of the King are an exercise in patchwork quilting. What this means, though, is that the parts are greater than the whole.
The three installments share common virtues. Like Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater," you have a perfect marriage of nature and technology, as the FX blends in seamlessly with the stunning New Zealand landscape.
Visuals are not enough to make a great movie, but they're enough, or almost enough, to make a great movie-viewing experience; for film, although a multiple artistic medium, is distinctively visual, and the visual dimension is what first catches your eye (pardon the pun). David Lean got a lot of mileage out of sheer, sensuous visuals.
Aside from the large-scale effects, there are also some arresting shots on a more intimate scale, such as the sight of elves crossing the bridge by lamplight, or Gandalf whistling for his steed, or the lighting of the fire-beacons cross the mountain range.
The orcs are suitably beastly, and the scene of haunted swamplands is like something out of Dante.
In addition, the movie is a showcase of fine acting—dominated as it is by actors who honed their craft on the English stage.
One advantage of the transfer from word to image is that most of Tolkien's Prince Valiant diction is mercifully cut out. Conversely, Twin Towers has a generous sampling of Elvish, which falls more graceful on the ear than his lead-footed English prose or poetry.
To some extent, though, these very virtues can turn into vices. There is a feeling of dupli-cation as we go from the Twin Towers to the Return of the King. More of the same, only bigger and badder. More battles, more monsters, more to-ing and fro-ing.
To be subjected to American actors like Elijah Wood faking an Oxbridge accent is a grating detail. I'm not quite sure why Jackson insisted on this. It is to impose stylistic uniformity? It is because an English accent sounds classier? Is it because Tolkien was an Englishmen? But Middle Earth is not modern England.
Gandalf is expertly acted, but in Twin Towers and Return of the King he has no particular use for his wizardry. For the most part he's just another generic warrior, using his magic staff as a blunt instrument. This a waste of thespian talent, for McKellen is a seasoned Shakespearean actor who knows every trick in the book.
Aragorn is played by a wonderfully sympathetic actor with an iconically Christ-like look. What with his gladiatorial exploits in the first installment, Aragorn had already established himself as a great warrior. But once his military credentials are a matter of public record, where do you go from there? The Two Towers and Return of the King pile up ever more medals in his war chest, but they don't advance our understanding of the character. One wonders what such an actor could do with a real role that gave full play to his expressive range.
Many reviewers find Elijah Wood ideal for the part. But given that the hobbits typify English countryfolk—sturdy peasants and sensible gentlemen farmers, it's hard to visualize Elijah Wood, what with his cherubic face, porcelain complexion, Joan Crawford eyes, and girlish demeanor, as someone who ever spent much time in a barnyard. He looks more like a kid who never ventured outside a shopping mall.
And the way Wood and Astin gaze into each other's eyes is less like a normal pair of buddy boys and more like boyfriend/girlfriend. I wonder if this is a play to the current queer/transgender fad.
Things are even worse in the Return of the King. I've not seen so much blubber since Moby-Dick. The Hobbits constantly dissolve into tears like little girls weeping over a dead kitten. This seems to be yet another example of imposing an androgynous agenda on the characters and audience alike.
Weaving, with his Mandarin aspect, has naturally elfish, not to say impish looks, but I find him rather stiff and studied. Indeed, the elves in general have a Vulcan like austerity and severity.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Galadriel. She seems a bit unhinged to me—more witchy than bewitching; but, then, my personal acquaintance with elves is admittedly limited, so what do I know? She doesn't strike me as pretty enough for the part. Blanchett is not a classic beauty, yet the role is clearly intended to represent a feminine ideal. And in that respect she doesn't rise to our expectations.
Here I think Jackson was confronted with a compromise. He needed an actress young enough to portray an ageless elf, but with enough gravitas to portray a queen. Still, Blanchett's nasal faux-Shakespearean accent doesn't quite do it for me.
This is also a bit of a problem for Arwen--one part Amazon to two parts princess. Liv Tyler is better looking than Blanchett, but in Hollywood, good-looking women are a dime a dozen. Hollywood as spoiled us for nothing less than perfection. A woman who would be the prom queen or even a fashion mode is just another pretty face up on the screen. It takes something truly outstanding to stand out from among the competition.
Likewise, Tyler doesn't seem quite womanly enough to be a natural match for Aragorn. More like a daughter than a wife.
Another problem, for me at least, is that Arwen and Galadriel are Aryan ice-princesses. The casting is authentic to Tolkien's Nordic sensibilities. But I would prefer a breath of Mediterranean warmth to thaw the ice-water running through their veins. Indeed, this applies to the landscape as well.
On the other hand, she's much too lady-like to be a convincing Amazon, even though she's made to mix it up with the male combatants. Jackson tries to expand the role of women into superheroines (Arwen, the Shieldmaiden of Rohan). But the effort is just that—effortful. It also violates the nature of a period piece. The problem is twofold: (i) LOTR is situated in a warrior culture, and a warrior culture selects for masculine virtues; (ii) LOTR belongs to the quest genre, and this, again, selects for male camaraderie and gallantry.
It is possible for women to occupy a central role in a medieval epic. Sigrid Unset has shown the way. And that might translate well into a mini-series. But it doesn't work as well for an action flick--where brute force is a survival advantage. You end up with mannish female leads and effeminate male leads.
Even Aragon is indecisive compared with the women. Is this just the old theme of the reluctant warrior? Or is it yet another nod to feminism--softening the man to strengthen the woman?
One of the standing ironies of women's liberation is that we no longer have actresses like Crawford, Heburn, Davis, and Stanwyck or West who have the stage-presence to command the screen. The women are getting smaller at the very time they are taking on male roles. How do we account for this? I'd suggest two reasons:
First of all, the Hollywood queens of the thirties and forties, precisely because they had to make it in a man's world, rose to the top through sheer force of personality. They were able to project it on screen because they were able to project it off-screen.
Second, teenage girls have far more buying-power than in the past. Movie studios target this demographic group. As a consequence, we have a shifted from the womanly female lead to a female lead who is, by turns, mannish, girlish--or even sluttish. This is equally true on TV (Dark Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mutant X, Space Above and Beyond) and music videos (Britney Spears). In this company, an actress with Sophia Loren's full, womanly largesse is an embarrassment of riches. Even the sex symbols are no longer the product of natural endowment and sexual maturation, but amount to an anorexic adolescent with silicon implants.
And it is not limited to the choice of an actress. To take one recent example, the Trojan War was cast with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the lead roles. Now, it's easy to poke fun at old action stars like Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, and Charlton Heston, but they brought a natural manliness and unmistakable maturity to their tough guy roles that make their contemporary counterparts looks like High school freshmen in Malibu. They may not have been great actors, but then, they were not starring in great movies. And they could fill out the parts a lot better than the current crop.
Our aspirations are rewarded, not in the flesh-and-bone of real people, but in the computer generated fantasies of Rivendell, Lothlorien, Parth Galen, and Minas Tirinth--like a dream come true; for the power of computer animation lies in giving palpable form to our wildest flights of imagination.
As to Gollum, well, a little Gollum goes a long way. This is a potentially tragic and even sympathetic figure, but the acting is a parody of Peter Lorre in his waning days—or Yoda gone over to the dark side. And he's is almost every scene. There's no escaping him. I suppose one belated advantage is that it gives the audience a chance to cheer when he goes over the edge of Mt. Doom. But I'm getting ahead of the story.
Wormtongue is another juicy villain—played to the hilt in the scenery-chewing tradition of great villains. Speaking of which, Christopher Lee, reprising his part, is a magnificent ham, perfectly cast in the role of the wicked wizard. He brings to his role the same relish as Ricardo Montalban as Khan. But by the same token, it raises the question of tone. How seriously are we supposed to take the story?
Indeed, the tonal shifts are jarring. The towering trolls, dragons, and heffalumps are like stuffed animals plucked from a child's playbox. This would suggest that the picture is a kiddy flick. But then you have the love scenes between Aragorn and Arwen, which suggests that it's really pitched for grown-ups.
Worse yet is when Legolas and his dwarfish comrade-in-arms are joking over who dis-patched more orcs. This is right after a massive battle in which many of archer's elfish cobelligerents were slaughtered. The juvenile humor undercuts naturally moving moments like the death of Theoden.
Indeed, it's all too obvious that these cutesy scenes are sandwiched in-between the battle scenes to afford comic relief. This takes the patronizing view that an average moviegoer can't stand too much heroism. But, in fairness, this is not all the director's fault. Tolkien himself had a heavy-handed sense of humor.
I suppose we could call this a movie for children of all ages, as the saying goes. And the tonal shifts might be defended on the grounds that great art can play on different levels, to different members of the audience. Maybe so, but there are more skillful ways of doing this. In Dante you have a spare, transparent storyline with an inexhaustible subtext.
I also think it's questionable artistic judgment for Jackson to preview Mt. Doom. Much of the appeal of a movie like this lies in the momentum of mounting curiosity as we wonder what lies behind the next door. By showing us the destination at the very outset, the des-tination is inevitability something of an anticlimax when we finally arrive. A certain sense of let-down is unavoidable in this sort of film, but it should at least reflect the natural release of tension after the suspenseful build-up.
There are also times when Jackson is unable to rise above his raw material. Sauron's evil eye is a clinker on the printed page, and the film medium has a way of magnifying the flaws of the original.
Another practical problem is that the average moviegoer is fairly shockproof. We've been plastered with so many horror films that the conventions of the genre leave us unmoved. It takes something really unexpected to send a shiver up our spine. LOTR is rarely able to pierce our thick-skinned scar-tissue.
The Twin Towers lacks the narrative cohesion of the Fellowship, becoming quite frag-mented, with a surfeit of subplots. One consequence is that it loses the natural rhythm of a road trip and gets bogged down in detours.
Again, this is not necessarily a fault of the director, for Jackson is at the mercy of his material. Tolkien's plot is a ramshackle affair. And Jackson tried to tighten it up as best he could, but he can't give a lean, linear form to a fundamentally shapeless storyline.
The soundtrack is no match for the visuals. It needs a lush, sweeping, folk musical score along the lines of Vaughan Williams to do it full justice. Of course, Vaughan Williams is dead, but selections or adaptations of his music could have been worked into the score. What we get instead is a very thin and repetitive series of leitmotivs.
The special effects are stunning. Computer generated FX is something of a trade-off. On the one hand, it's now possible to stage displays that Cecil B. DeMille could only dream of. On the other hand, the viewer is a tad too aware that such unrealistic effects are…well…unreal. The distinctive power of the cinematic medium lies in its illusion of reality, and too much FX strains the willing suspension of belief.
Along the same lines, the viewer is regularly exposed to the spectator of Aragorn or Legolas outnumbered 20-1 in hand-to-hand combat. Now it only stands to reason, with so many swords and spears and arrows on every side, that at some point their luck would run out. The fact that they always come out on top against overwhelming odds strains credulity. And this comes on top of all the close calls and narrow escapes for Frodo and Samwise.
Now, if LOTR has a sturdy doctrine of divine providence, then this would be made more plausible. But that brings us to the controversial issue of the work's worldview. Many Christian readers and viewers insist that the work in someway assumes or illustrates a profoundly Christian worldview.
In order to address this question, we have to separate the film from the book. In the most persuasive discussion I've read on this subject, Anna Mathie suggests that the Christian complexion of the book lies not in theology, but ethics, as the cardinal virtues are trans-muted into the theological virtues. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0401/reviews/mathie.html
There's a sense in which this does carry over to the screen adaptation. In that respect, LOTR moves in the chivalric tradition of The Song of Roland rather than the epic tradition of the Iliad.
But from a Christian standpoint, there are some really obvious things amiss. There are no houses of worship. The heroes never pray, not even on the eve of battle. In this respect it departs from the chivalric tradition.
At one point, Gandalf hints at the afterlife, but the conception is generic rather than Christian.
I'm of two minds as to whether I should comment on some glaring incongruities in the film. How come Frodo and Samwise are not incinerated by the heat of Mt. Doom? How can ghosts do battle with flesh-and-blood?
Maybe questions like these take the movie too seriously. But that depends on whether we rank this as great movie-making.
Jackson wraps up the epic by having the good guys literally sail into the sunset. At one level, it is tempting to wince at the shopworn cliché. Yet there is a reason for cliches. They tap into something deep. This is a master metaphor, and although it seems too good to be true in the real world, yet in the world of Middle Earth, it has the ring of truth. Or does it?
There's something monumentally silly about the underlying material. This is essentially a bedtime story run amok. It is story with high moral purpose, but that runs the risk of un-intended comedy if the execution undercuts the aim. LOTR is better the less you think about it. Is this a kiddy-flick with delusions of grandeur, or the reverse? On the scale of epic morality plays, I prefer Heston doing battle with the Moors in El Cid--not counting the lus-cious Sophia Loren as his love interest!
Jackson's adaptation is remarkably successful in winning both critical and popular acclaim. Many movies score big at the box office, but are panned by the critics. Yet the LOTR is about as popular with the critics as it is with the general public.
There is a dispute over which is the best of the three. In my opinion, The Fellowship of the Ring is the best, because it has a lean and clean storyline. Once the fellowship disbands, we lose some of the narrative cohesion. This, of course, is true of most movies, but most movies don't begin with this unifying principle, so its loss is more keenly felt.
To be sure, it is more than possible to make a virtue of parallel storylines. The Odyssey is the paradigm-case. However, Homer was working backwards from multiple points of separation to a steady convergence. So his technique had its own elegant progression. But the scene changes in the Two Towers and Return of the King are an exercise in patchwork quilting. What this means, though, is that the parts are greater than the whole.
The three installments share common virtues. Like Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater," you have a perfect marriage of nature and technology, as the FX blends in seamlessly with the stunning New Zealand landscape.
Visuals are not enough to make a great movie, but they're enough, or almost enough, to make a great movie-viewing experience; for film, although a multiple artistic medium, is distinctively visual, and the visual dimension is what first catches your eye (pardon the pun). David Lean got a lot of mileage out of sheer, sensuous visuals.
Aside from the large-scale effects, there are also some arresting shots on a more intimate scale, such as the sight of elves crossing the bridge by lamplight, or Gandalf whistling for his steed, or the lighting of the fire-beacons cross the mountain range.
The orcs are suitably beastly, and the scene of haunted swamplands is like something out of Dante.
In addition, the movie is a showcase of fine acting—dominated as it is by actors who honed their craft on the English stage.
One advantage of the transfer from word to image is that most of Tolkien's Prince Valiant diction is mercifully cut out. Conversely, Twin Towers has a generous sampling of Elvish, which falls more graceful on the ear than his lead-footed English prose or poetry.
To some extent, though, these very virtues can turn into vices. There is a feeling of dupli-cation as we go from the Twin Towers to the Return of the King. More of the same, only bigger and badder. More battles, more monsters, more to-ing and fro-ing.
To be subjected to American actors like Elijah Wood faking an Oxbridge accent is a grating detail. I'm not quite sure why Jackson insisted on this. It is to impose stylistic uniformity? It is because an English accent sounds classier? Is it because Tolkien was an Englishmen? But Middle Earth is not modern England.
Gandalf is expertly acted, but in Twin Towers and Return of the King he has no particular use for his wizardry. For the most part he's just another generic warrior, using his magic staff as a blunt instrument. This a waste of thespian talent, for McKellen is a seasoned Shakespearean actor who knows every trick in the book.
Aragorn is played by a wonderfully sympathetic actor with an iconically Christ-like look. What with his gladiatorial exploits in the first installment, Aragorn had already established himself as a great warrior. But once his military credentials are a matter of public record, where do you go from there? The Two Towers and Return of the King pile up ever more medals in his war chest, but they don't advance our understanding of the character. One wonders what such an actor could do with a real role that gave full play to his expressive range.
Many reviewers find Elijah Wood ideal for the part. But given that the hobbits typify English countryfolk—sturdy peasants and sensible gentlemen farmers, it's hard to visualize Elijah Wood, what with his cherubic face, porcelain complexion, Joan Crawford eyes, and girlish demeanor, as someone who ever spent much time in a barnyard. He looks more like a kid who never ventured outside a shopping mall.
And the way Wood and Astin gaze into each other's eyes is less like a normal pair of buddy boys and more like boyfriend/girlfriend. I wonder if this is a play to the current queer/transgender fad.
Things are even worse in the Return of the King. I've not seen so much blubber since Moby-Dick. The Hobbits constantly dissolve into tears like little girls weeping over a dead kitten. This seems to be yet another example of imposing an androgynous agenda on the characters and audience alike.
Weaving, with his Mandarin aspect, has naturally elfish, not to say impish looks, but I find him rather stiff and studied. Indeed, the elves in general have a Vulcan like austerity and severity.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Galadriel. She seems a bit unhinged to me—more witchy than bewitching; but, then, my personal acquaintance with elves is admittedly limited, so what do I know? She doesn't strike me as pretty enough for the part. Blanchett is not a classic beauty, yet the role is clearly intended to represent a feminine ideal. And in that respect she doesn't rise to our expectations.
Here I think Jackson was confronted with a compromise. He needed an actress young enough to portray an ageless elf, but with enough gravitas to portray a queen. Still, Blanchett's nasal faux-Shakespearean accent doesn't quite do it for me.
This is also a bit of a problem for Arwen--one part Amazon to two parts princess. Liv Tyler is better looking than Blanchett, but in Hollywood, good-looking women are a dime a dozen. Hollywood as spoiled us for nothing less than perfection. A woman who would be the prom queen or even a fashion mode is just another pretty face up on the screen. It takes something truly outstanding to stand out from among the competition.
Likewise, Tyler doesn't seem quite womanly enough to be a natural match for Aragorn. More like a daughter than a wife.
Another problem, for me at least, is that Arwen and Galadriel are Aryan ice-princesses. The casting is authentic to Tolkien's Nordic sensibilities. But I would prefer a breath of Mediterranean warmth to thaw the ice-water running through their veins. Indeed, this applies to the landscape as well.
On the other hand, she's much too lady-like to be a convincing Amazon, even though she's made to mix it up with the male combatants. Jackson tries to expand the role of women into superheroines (Arwen, the Shieldmaiden of Rohan). But the effort is just that—effortful. It also violates the nature of a period piece. The problem is twofold: (i) LOTR is situated in a warrior culture, and a warrior culture selects for masculine virtues; (ii) LOTR belongs to the quest genre, and this, again, selects for male camaraderie and gallantry.
It is possible for women to occupy a central role in a medieval epic. Sigrid Unset has shown the way. And that might translate well into a mini-series. But it doesn't work as well for an action flick--where brute force is a survival advantage. You end up with mannish female leads and effeminate male leads.
Even Aragon is indecisive compared with the women. Is this just the old theme of the reluctant warrior? Or is it yet another nod to feminism--softening the man to strengthen the woman?
One of the standing ironies of women's liberation is that we no longer have actresses like Crawford, Heburn, Davis, and Stanwyck or West who have the stage-presence to command the screen. The women are getting smaller at the very time they are taking on male roles. How do we account for this? I'd suggest two reasons:
First of all, the Hollywood queens of the thirties and forties, precisely because they had to make it in a man's world, rose to the top through sheer force of personality. They were able to project it on screen because they were able to project it off-screen.
Second, teenage girls have far more buying-power than in the past. Movie studios target this demographic group. As a consequence, we have a shifted from the womanly female lead to a female lead who is, by turns, mannish, girlish--or even sluttish. This is equally true on TV (Dark Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mutant X, Space Above and Beyond) and music videos (Britney Spears). In this company, an actress with Sophia Loren's full, womanly largesse is an embarrassment of riches. Even the sex symbols are no longer the product of natural endowment and sexual maturation, but amount to an anorexic adolescent with silicon implants.
And it is not limited to the choice of an actress. To take one recent example, the Trojan War was cast with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom in the lead roles. Now, it's easy to poke fun at old action stars like Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, and Charlton Heston, but they brought a natural manliness and unmistakable maturity to their tough guy roles that make their contemporary counterparts looks like High school freshmen in Malibu. They may not have been great actors, but then, they were not starring in great movies. And they could fill out the parts a lot better than the current crop.
Our aspirations are rewarded, not in the flesh-and-bone of real people, but in the computer generated fantasies of Rivendell, Lothlorien, Parth Galen, and Minas Tirinth--like a dream come true; for the power of computer animation lies in giving palpable form to our wildest flights of imagination.
As to Gollum, well, a little Gollum goes a long way. This is a potentially tragic and even sympathetic figure, but the acting is a parody of Peter Lorre in his waning days—or Yoda gone over to the dark side. And he's is almost every scene. There's no escaping him. I suppose one belated advantage is that it gives the audience a chance to cheer when he goes over the edge of Mt. Doom. But I'm getting ahead of the story.
Wormtongue is another juicy villain—played to the hilt in the scenery-chewing tradition of great villains. Speaking of which, Christopher Lee, reprising his part, is a magnificent ham, perfectly cast in the role of the wicked wizard. He brings to his role the same relish as Ricardo Montalban as Khan. But by the same token, it raises the question of tone. How seriously are we supposed to take the story?
Indeed, the tonal shifts are jarring. The towering trolls, dragons, and heffalumps are like stuffed animals plucked from a child's playbox. This would suggest that the picture is a kiddy flick. But then you have the love scenes between Aragorn and Arwen, which suggests that it's really pitched for grown-ups.
Worse yet is when Legolas and his dwarfish comrade-in-arms are joking over who dis-patched more orcs. This is right after a massive battle in which many of archer's elfish cobelligerents were slaughtered. The juvenile humor undercuts naturally moving moments like the death of Theoden.
Indeed, it's all too obvious that these cutesy scenes are sandwiched in-between the battle scenes to afford comic relief. This takes the patronizing view that an average moviegoer can't stand too much heroism. But, in fairness, this is not all the director's fault. Tolkien himself had a heavy-handed sense of humor.
I suppose we could call this a movie for children of all ages, as the saying goes. And the tonal shifts might be defended on the grounds that great art can play on different levels, to different members of the audience. Maybe so, but there are more skillful ways of doing this. In Dante you have a spare, transparent storyline with an inexhaustible subtext.
I also think it's questionable artistic judgment for Jackson to preview Mt. Doom. Much of the appeal of a movie like this lies in the momentum of mounting curiosity as we wonder what lies behind the next door. By showing us the destination at the very outset, the des-tination is inevitability something of an anticlimax when we finally arrive. A certain sense of let-down is unavoidable in this sort of film, but it should at least reflect the natural release of tension after the suspenseful build-up.
There are also times when Jackson is unable to rise above his raw material. Sauron's evil eye is a clinker on the printed page, and the film medium has a way of magnifying the flaws of the original.
Another practical problem is that the average moviegoer is fairly shockproof. We've been plastered with so many horror films that the conventions of the genre leave us unmoved. It takes something really unexpected to send a shiver up our spine. LOTR is rarely able to pierce our thick-skinned scar-tissue.
The Twin Towers lacks the narrative cohesion of the Fellowship, becoming quite frag-mented, with a surfeit of subplots. One consequence is that it loses the natural rhythm of a road trip and gets bogged down in detours.
Again, this is not necessarily a fault of the director, for Jackson is at the mercy of his material. Tolkien's plot is a ramshackle affair. And Jackson tried to tighten it up as best he could, but he can't give a lean, linear form to a fundamentally shapeless storyline.
The soundtrack is no match for the visuals. It needs a lush, sweeping, folk musical score along the lines of Vaughan Williams to do it full justice. Of course, Vaughan Williams is dead, but selections or adaptations of his music could have been worked into the score. What we get instead is a very thin and repetitive series of leitmotivs.
The special effects are stunning. Computer generated FX is something of a trade-off. On the one hand, it's now possible to stage displays that Cecil B. DeMille could only dream of. On the other hand, the viewer is a tad too aware that such unrealistic effects are…well…unreal. The distinctive power of the cinematic medium lies in its illusion of reality, and too much FX strains the willing suspension of belief.
Along the same lines, the viewer is regularly exposed to the spectator of Aragorn or Legolas outnumbered 20-1 in hand-to-hand combat. Now it only stands to reason, with so many swords and spears and arrows on every side, that at some point their luck would run out. The fact that they always come out on top against overwhelming odds strains credulity. And this comes on top of all the close calls and narrow escapes for Frodo and Samwise.
Now, if LOTR has a sturdy doctrine of divine providence, then this would be made more plausible. But that brings us to the controversial issue of the work's worldview. Many Christian readers and viewers insist that the work in someway assumes or illustrates a profoundly Christian worldview.
In order to address this question, we have to separate the film from the book. In the most persuasive discussion I've read on this subject, Anna Mathie suggests that the Christian complexion of the book lies not in theology, but ethics, as the cardinal virtues are trans-muted into the theological virtues. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0401/reviews/mathie.html
There's a sense in which this does carry over to the screen adaptation. In that respect, LOTR moves in the chivalric tradition of The Song of Roland rather than the epic tradition of the Iliad.
But from a Christian standpoint, there are some really obvious things amiss. There are no houses of worship. The heroes never pray, not even on the eve of battle. In this respect it departs from the chivalric tradition.
At one point, Gandalf hints at the afterlife, but the conception is generic rather than Christian.
I'm of two minds as to whether I should comment on some glaring incongruities in the film. How come Frodo and Samwise are not incinerated by the heat of Mt. Doom? How can ghosts do battle with flesh-and-blood?
Maybe questions like these take the movie too seriously. But that depends on whether we rank this as great movie-making.
Jackson wraps up the epic by having the good guys literally sail into the sunset. At one level, it is tempting to wince at the shopworn cliché. Yet there is a reason for cliches. They tap into something deep. This is a master metaphor, and although it seems too good to be true in the real world, yet in the world of Middle Earth, it has the ring of truth. Or does it?
There's something monumentally silly about the underlying material. This is essentially a bedtime story run amok. It is story with high moral purpose, but that runs the risk of un-intended comedy if the execution undercuts the aim. LOTR is better the less you think about it. Is this a kiddy-flick with delusions of grandeur, or the reverse? On the scale of epic morality plays, I prefer Heston doing battle with the Moors in El Cid--not counting the lus-cious Sophia Loren as his love interest!
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Nemesis
Star Trek: Nemesis affords a natural occasion to reflect on the Star Trek franchise, the SF genre, and the definition of drama.
I suppose that like almost any American male who came of age during the second half of the 20C, I enjoy the SF genre. I’m old enough to have seen the classic Trek series in its premier broadcast. And I’ve monitored the franchise in its films and sequels. I’m not a fan, much less a Trekkie. To me it was never more than dumb fun. I’m now older than the lead actors were when they began the franchise or its sequels, and even the entertainment value has worn rather thin for me.
Star Trek achieved iconic status in the pop culture long ago. That is one reason it’s worth reflecting on. But one question is how deep that runs. Is it limited to bumper stickers and a sub-cult following?
Star Trek acquired its niche by riding on the crest of the counterculture. Roddenberry’s vision of the future was very much in sync with the Summer of Love. Drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll would usher in the Aquarian Age of love, peace, and brotherhood, baby.
It seems hopelessly naive, now, but there were many back then who took this quite seriously. That was, in part, because the counterculture was youth-oriented, and the young tend to be idealistic.
This may seem to be all very nostalgic and passe, but the fact is that many people still share Roddenberry’s vision. All they’ve done is to substitute the UN or the EU for the Federation. They think that education, international law, and the welfare state will reap the Millennium.
They think that nurture trumps nature; folks are not born to hate; no, they learn to hate, so that they can be taught not to hate. And even if this were ingrained, they believe that sooner or later science will reprogram human nature. Between social engineering and genetic reengineering, utopia lies ahead.
Another variant on this optimism is the hope that first contact with an alien species will civilize our Darwinianly-challeged humanity. ETs shall be our guardian angels and savior gods.
Let us now turn to Nemesis. It isn’t the best of the Star Trek movies or the worst. But I found the film distractingly flawed. There were to many inconsistencies, or artificial consistencies, or arbitrary assumptions.
One problem is that Nemesis is a spinoff of the TV series. As such it feels the need to carry over the same cast members. Now, when you start a new TV series, you don’t know in advance which characters and actors will click. In the final shakedown, Data and Picard were the principals.
La Forge was a token, Troi and Crusher were decorative, Worf supplied comic relief, while Riker was a cardboard cutout.
Nemesis is cluttered by the felt need on the part of producers to give everyone in the original cast a little piece of the action. There are even distracting cameo appearances as Wheaton, Mulgrew, and Goldberg cycle in for their Kodak moment.
This weighs down the drama. It means nothing to the uninitiated, and, frankly, I wonder how much it means to the devotees. It would be better to either kill off the secondary cast members or promote them to off-stage positions. Then the director and screenwriter could concentrate on the more interesting characters.
The cast is getting to old and out of shape. Star Fleet is a quasi-military institution, but Riker, for one, left his battle trim several candy bars behind.
Picard is also too old. Isn’t there a mandatory retirement age for Star Fleet captains? Realism is not augmented when we see Picard in a fistfight with his younger self. Gee, who would win that tussle—Grampa or his twenty-something clone?
Of course, this is a necessary compromise in the sense that the franchise is committed to Stewart. But it would have been more plausible if Star Fleet has taken Picard out of retirement for a special mission.
The screenwriters try to make a virtue of necessity by making this a sort of swan song in which Picard confronts his own mortality. Even so, the underlying incongruity remains.
But the problem is not just that Stewart is looking rather long of tooth. He sounds tired. To judge by this performance, Stewart is at that point in life where he can no longer summon the vital energy to project his character. It is a wonderfully mellow performance, but not a commanding performance. Too grandfatherly by half.
There is a similar problem with Data. An android is ageless, but Spiner is not. Jowly, baggy-eyes, sagging neckline. He should have gotten a face lift before reprising his role.
I’m not being supercilious about this. Actresses do it all the time. If betrays an unprofessional indifference to the part that Spiner doesn’t go under the blade to look the part.
Because Picard and Data are the fan favorites, they’re given essentially separate storylines. Picard has a double (Shinzon) and so does Data (B4). This is too pat to be plausible. And it is also awkward to make parallel plots converge. Why does the Enterprise go to Romulus? We are given two reasons: Star Fleet ordered the trip at the invitation of the Romulans; B4 was bait to lure the Enterprise to Romulus. But surely one reason would suffice. The redundancy only exists as a clumsy way of reconnecting Data’s story with Picard’s.
Why does the Reman Viceroy commit a telepathic rape of Troi? This seems to be a set up so that Troi can later reverse the process and detect the cloaked ship. Okay, but the telepathic rape makes no dramatic sense on its own.
And, while we’re on the subject, how does telepathy enable the Enterprise to track the Scimitar? How does telepathy interface with technology?
Shinzon’s character seems to be the product of a committee. He looks too soft, full-lipped, and doll-like to be a warrior. And the effect is not diminished by his uniform, which looks a bit too much like something from Liberace’s wardrobe. The same goes for his uppercrust accent. Did he pick that up in the Dilithium mines as well?
Another, rather effeminate moment, is when he rebuffs the advances of Donatra. What normal man would be offended by a female of her attributes stroking his cheek? Is Shinzon a hypochondriac? Oo! Girl's germs! Girl's germs!
Actually, as the product of a germ-free lab, our clone might well be a hypochondriac. There are some dramatic possibilities here. But it hardly fits with his career as a soldier. There is nothing especially antiseptic about hand-to-hand combat. The only reason he rebuffs her is, I guess, to establish that he’s a real mean dude—and maybe explain why she changes sides.
Now, the producers are committed to this antagonist because the character is the alter-ego of the protagonist (Picard), so he must look and sound like a youthful version of Stewart. But, again, that doesn’t relieve the underlying incongruity.
Why, exactly, does Shinzon want to destroy Picard? The reaction seems out of all proportion to the provocation. What is so unbearable about being a clone? Does a twin feel this way about his brother? Does a twin feel it necessary to kill his own brother in order to assert his own individuality? Seems sort of extreme to me. How common is fratricide among twins, anyway? Surely Shinzon can make a name for himself regardless of Picard’s reputation.
Shinzon is naturally curious about Picard. Okay, so why be in such a hurry to polish him off? And why does he never go through with the blood transfusion?
Why, exactly, does Shinzon want to annihilate life on earth? We seem to be given two reasons. This is another rejection of his humanity as he bonds with the Remans. But we’re also told that it strikes a mortal blow at the heart of the Federation, paving the way for the conquest of the entire quadrant. But why do we need two reasons when one would do the job?
For that matter, how would the destruction of the earth destroy the Federation? Surely the remaining members of the Federation could muster enough military might to defeat the Scimitar or even the whole Romulan fleet.
One also wonders what the need is for a new Doomsday weapon. Don’t you suppose that 24C military technology already had many ways of committing genocide? How much high technology does it really take to wipe out a biological organism or entire species? We could have done it to ourselves with 20C (nuclear) technology.
We’re told that Shinzon was exiled to die in the Dilithium mines for fear the Federation would uncover plot and instigate a war. Really? Would the peace-loving Federation wage war against the Romulans if it discovered a defunct espionage plot involving a clone of Picard? Doesn’t sound much like the Federation I grew up with.
On another note, why do so many of the space craft look like the paper airplanes I made in grade school—complete with wings and cool-looking tail-fins? And why do they operate with jet propulsion? Is aerodynamic design important in a vacuum? What are those back burners pushing up against? What is holding the Enterprise in place while the Scimitar pulls away?
Of course, these common sense objections could be leveled against many SF films. But, that itself, is a question. Why is it that in movie after movie after movie, including high budget films, that no matter how often these elementary blunders are pointed out by critics as well as the fan base, nothing every changes? Why don’t producers respect their core constituency and develop a few simple conventions that don’t constantly overtax the willing suspension of belief?
There are many movie genres which are perfectly coherent. For example, many SF films merely resituate the Western genre. Yet the Western genre is rarely counterintuitive. So what is it about SF that seems to invite chronic incoherence?
Let’s finish our review with a couple of other cavils before I try to draw some broader lessons. Why the ubiquitous fire fight battle in outer space? It also gets to be unspeakably tedious to have these split-second narrow escapes. How many times have we seen the clock literally ticking down to the last nanosecond before the hero rides in right in the nick of time to avert disaster and save the crew for the sequel? The shields are down, warp drive is off-line, and the fuse is within a hair’s-breadth of the bomb.
Yes, this time Data is finished for good, but, no, not really, because he lives on in B4. So his demise is emotionally risk-free.
Again, why do we so often end in a match up between the hero and the bad guy?
Now, in fairness to SF filmmakers, the critics often seem to be just as incoherent in their objections. On the one hand, you have the usual jibes about cowboys in outer space and glitzy
FX. On the other hand, critics are often quite hostile SF films that ponder existential questions and raise the intellectual level of the dialogue. They dismiss this as just so much pseudoprofound didacticism.
It is possible to offer some very banal explanations for some of these deficiencies. Producers make movies to make money. They punch up the action to sell tickets. They fall back on formulaic writing because they’re under time constraints. They make aliens looks like humans, and spacecraft look like racing cars and fighter jets, because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar and not challenge the expectations of the audience.
Maybe, but that doesn’t explain everything, and even for what it does explain, I not sure that there isn’t a deeper answer.
A teleplay often resorts to stock dramatic devices because the screenwriter is facing such a tight deadline to hand in the script. Also, in an hour-long show (minus commercial breaks), you want to deliver the goods in a hurry.
But movies are a different beast. There’s plenty of time to write a good screenplay. One doesn’t have to reach for instant gratification and the most threadbare plot devices.
Unlike moviegoers in general, many SF viewers are quite literate in the genre, with a command of popular science as well, if not a major in the field. The same often holds true for the screenwriter, director, and producers.
So it isn’t clear, from a practical or commercial standpoint, why so many movies in this genre should be so careless about the illusion of consistency. And their core constituency likes to be challenged to imagine the unimaginable.
Moreover, the predictable formulas and obvious dramatic devices are boring and irritating rather than exciting. This is one reason so many high-budget movies bomb every year. So commercial success can’t be what is driving this from start to finish.
Having found the pat answers a little too thin, let’s consider a few other explanations. One concerns the definition of drama. It is a cliche to say that conflict is the essence of drama. More precisely, conflict resolution is held to be the essence of drama. So the dramatic arc sets up the conditions of conflict, and then relieves the conflict for better or worse.
That is why so many TV series constantly return, many times a year, year after year, to dramas about cops and robbers, private-eyes, doctors, lawyers, and firemen. The simple idea is to situate the story is a naturally dramatic setting, with life-and-death struggles and their attendant emotions. Before the advent of cinema, this was the stuff of grand opera and the penny dreadfuls.
That’s the reason that Nemesis resorts to the same dramatic devices. It isn’t just because that’s such a quick and easy way to write, or because it delivers a big emotional payload at the end. Rather, that’s the reigning definition of drama, of what makes a gripping story or page-turner. And the definition controls the product regardless of whether the formula actually works or not.
This suggests that the definition itself is defective. It is too stereotypical. The average viewer becomes emotionally numb. We can always see what’s coming next, so our feelings are not engaged.
C.S. Lewis once said that you can’t begin to really enjoy a good book until you read it the second time. The first time you read it you’re too curious about what’s going to happen next and how it all comes out, to really appreciate the quality of the writing. Only after your superficial curiosity is sated are you able to sit back and savor the book at a deeper level.
I would suggest that we need to revolutionize our definition of drama. It isn’t that the old definition is wrong, but that it is much too narrow and shallow.
And this isn’t a difference between the literary and cinematic medium. Why do film buffs have favorite films? Why do they watch the same film many times? It isn’t for the high-tension drama, because that depends on an element of suspense, which depends, in turn, on an element of surprise, that is lost after the very first viewing.
And there’s another reason we need to broaden our definition, because the old fashioned, operating definition is too proscriptive and prescriptive rather than descriptive of life. For drama, in the narrow sense, is only a small part of life, and often not the most important part of life.
Life dictates to art, art doesn’t dictate to life. Art is about experience, and not about winnowing down the raw materials to fit an a priori definition. Drama, if it is to be true to life, to be a true interpretation of life, ought to be open to a broader range of experience than the amusement park or circus act. Why not take life as it comes to us, touching it up a bit, but without radical surgery?
Another answer goes to limitations inherent in the SF genre. SF has certain conventions that lend it some flexibility, in terms of what it posits to be possible. But, by the same token, SF raises expectations that are hard for SF to satisfy. It imagines other worlds, but the only world that supplies the standard of comparison is, of course, the real world, and, in particular, the provincial little world we know on earth. So SF is literally a disguised version of an utterly mundane experience. Its extraordinary vision is only an extension or projection of ordinary sights and sounds. The aliens are never very alien.
This is one reason that Star Trek is so banal. All the aliens are humanized. The Vulcans, Klingons, and androids are humanized. Space exploration becomes a cheesy version of an expedition or safari to some exotic locale on terra firma. Space explorers domesticate the headhunters and civilize the savages of other alien species.
Still another reason for the thinness of the SF genre is that, as a rule, it exemplifies a secular outlook on life. A stock theme in Star Trek is the exploration of our humanity. And how do we define the essence of humanity? In Star Trek, personal autonomy and individuality is the essence of humanity.
But even if we were agreed on this definition, where does that take us? What does it mean to be an individual? Is an individual self-defining, or does the pressure of other persons supply the mutual surfaces and shared boundaries of his own identity?
Again, what do we do with our freedom? Is freedom an end it itself, or a means to the end? In Nemesis, this is a quest to be more than we are, to be better than we are. But what is the frame of reference? What are we supposed to be reaching for? What supplies the vertical axis of aspiration along the horizontal axis of humanism? Gazing at a mirror doesn’t offer an ideal alternative—even if the ideal were obtainable.
SF is not so much a secular vision as it is a secularized vision of something else—a stripped down version, with pseudoscientific trappings, of apocalyptic eschatology—with a climactic battle between the Christ figure (e.g., Picard) and the Antichrist figure (the Borg queen, Shinzon, Khan), terminating in heaven-on-earth (the Federation) for the victors, and a lake of fire (flaming space ships) for the vanquished. The Star Wars saga follows the same pattern.
Therein lies both the dramatic power and the broken promise of the SF genre. The source of conflict and resolution is essentially religious in aspect, but in a suppressed and censored form.
I suppose that like almost any American male who came of age during the second half of the 20C, I enjoy the SF genre. I’m old enough to have seen the classic Trek series in its premier broadcast. And I’ve monitored the franchise in its films and sequels. I’m not a fan, much less a Trekkie. To me it was never more than dumb fun. I’m now older than the lead actors were when they began the franchise or its sequels, and even the entertainment value has worn rather thin for me.
Star Trek achieved iconic status in the pop culture long ago. That is one reason it’s worth reflecting on. But one question is how deep that runs. Is it limited to bumper stickers and a sub-cult following?
Star Trek acquired its niche by riding on the crest of the counterculture. Roddenberry’s vision of the future was very much in sync with the Summer of Love. Drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll would usher in the Aquarian Age of love, peace, and brotherhood, baby.
It seems hopelessly naive, now, but there were many back then who took this quite seriously. That was, in part, because the counterculture was youth-oriented, and the young tend to be idealistic.
This may seem to be all very nostalgic and passe, but the fact is that many people still share Roddenberry’s vision. All they’ve done is to substitute the UN or the EU for the Federation. They think that education, international law, and the welfare state will reap the Millennium.
They think that nurture trumps nature; folks are not born to hate; no, they learn to hate, so that they can be taught not to hate. And even if this were ingrained, they believe that sooner or later science will reprogram human nature. Between social engineering and genetic reengineering, utopia lies ahead.
Another variant on this optimism is the hope that first contact with an alien species will civilize our Darwinianly-challeged humanity. ETs shall be our guardian angels and savior gods.
Let us now turn to Nemesis. It isn’t the best of the Star Trek movies or the worst. But I found the film distractingly flawed. There were to many inconsistencies, or artificial consistencies, or arbitrary assumptions.
One problem is that Nemesis is a spinoff of the TV series. As such it feels the need to carry over the same cast members. Now, when you start a new TV series, you don’t know in advance which characters and actors will click. In the final shakedown, Data and Picard were the principals.
La Forge was a token, Troi and Crusher were decorative, Worf supplied comic relief, while Riker was a cardboard cutout.
Nemesis is cluttered by the felt need on the part of producers to give everyone in the original cast a little piece of the action. There are even distracting cameo appearances as Wheaton, Mulgrew, and Goldberg cycle in for their Kodak moment.
This weighs down the drama. It means nothing to the uninitiated, and, frankly, I wonder how much it means to the devotees. It would be better to either kill off the secondary cast members or promote them to off-stage positions. Then the director and screenwriter could concentrate on the more interesting characters.
The cast is getting to old and out of shape. Star Fleet is a quasi-military institution, but Riker, for one, left his battle trim several candy bars behind.
Picard is also too old. Isn’t there a mandatory retirement age for Star Fleet captains? Realism is not augmented when we see Picard in a fistfight with his younger self. Gee, who would win that tussle—Grampa or his twenty-something clone?
Of course, this is a necessary compromise in the sense that the franchise is committed to Stewart. But it would have been more plausible if Star Fleet has taken Picard out of retirement for a special mission.
The screenwriters try to make a virtue of necessity by making this a sort of swan song in which Picard confronts his own mortality. Even so, the underlying incongruity remains.
But the problem is not just that Stewart is looking rather long of tooth. He sounds tired. To judge by this performance, Stewart is at that point in life where he can no longer summon the vital energy to project his character. It is a wonderfully mellow performance, but not a commanding performance. Too grandfatherly by half.
There is a similar problem with Data. An android is ageless, but Spiner is not. Jowly, baggy-eyes, sagging neckline. He should have gotten a face lift before reprising his role.
I’m not being supercilious about this. Actresses do it all the time. If betrays an unprofessional indifference to the part that Spiner doesn’t go under the blade to look the part.
Because Picard and Data are the fan favorites, they’re given essentially separate storylines. Picard has a double (Shinzon) and so does Data (B4). This is too pat to be plausible. And it is also awkward to make parallel plots converge. Why does the Enterprise go to Romulus? We are given two reasons: Star Fleet ordered the trip at the invitation of the Romulans; B4 was bait to lure the Enterprise to Romulus. But surely one reason would suffice. The redundancy only exists as a clumsy way of reconnecting Data’s story with Picard’s.
Why does the Reman Viceroy commit a telepathic rape of Troi? This seems to be a set up so that Troi can later reverse the process and detect the cloaked ship. Okay, but the telepathic rape makes no dramatic sense on its own.
And, while we’re on the subject, how does telepathy enable the Enterprise to track the Scimitar? How does telepathy interface with technology?
Shinzon’s character seems to be the product of a committee. He looks too soft, full-lipped, and doll-like to be a warrior. And the effect is not diminished by his uniform, which looks a bit too much like something from Liberace’s wardrobe. The same goes for his uppercrust accent. Did he pick that up in the Dilithium mines as well?
Another, rather effeminate moment, is when he rebuffs the advances of Donatra. What normal man would be offended by a female of her attributes stroking his cheek? Is Shinzon a hypochondriac? Oo! Girl's germs! Girl's germs!
Actually, as the product of a germ-free lab, our clone might well be a hypochondriac. There are some dramatic possibilities here. But it hardly fits with his career as a soldier. There is nothing especially antiseptic about hand-to-hand combat. The only reason he rebuffs her is, I guess, to establish that he’s a real mean dude—and maybe explain why she changes sides.
Now, the producers are committed to this antagonist because the character is the alter-ego of the protagonist (Picard), so he must look and sound like a youthful version of Stewart. But, again, that doesn’t relieve the underlying incongruity.
Why, exactly, does Shinzon want to destroy Picard? The reaction seems out of all proportion to the provocation. What is so unbearable about being a clone? Does a twin feel this way about his brother? Does a twin feel it necessary to kill his own brother in order to assert his own individuality? Seems sort of extreme to me. How common is fratricide among twins, anyway? Surely Shinzon can make a name for himself regardless of Picard’s reputation.
Shinzon is naturally curious about Picard. Okay, so why be in such a hurry to polish him off? And why does he never go through with the blood transfusion?
Why, exactly, does Shinzon want to annihilate life on earth? We seem to be given two reasons. This is another rejection of his humanity as he bonds with the Remans. But we’re also told that it strikes a mortal blow at the heart of the Federation, paving the way for the conquest of the entire quadrant. But why do we need two reasons when one would do the job?
For that matter, how would the destruction of the earth destroy the Federation? Surely the remaining members of the Federation could muster enough military might to defeat the Scimitar or even the whole Romulan fleet.
One also wonders what the need is for a new Doomsday weapon. Don’t you suppose that 24C military technology already had many ways of committing genocide? How much high technology does it really take to wipe out a biological organism or entire species? We could have done it to ourselves with 20C (nuclear) technology.
We’re told that Shinzon was exiled to die in the Dilithium mines for fear the Federation would uncover plot and instigate a war. Really? Would the peace-loving Federation wage war against the Romulans if it discovered a defunct espionage plot involving a clone of Picard? Doesn’t sound much like the Federation I grew up with.
On another note, why do so many of the space craft look like the paper airplanes I made in grade school—complete with wings and cool-looking tail-fins? And why do they operate with jet propulsion? Is aerodynamic design important in a vacuum? What are those back burners pushing up against? What is holding the Enterprise in place while the Scimitar pulls away?
Of course, these common sense objections could be leveled against many SF films. But, that itself, is a question. Why is it that in movie after movie after movie, including high budget films, that no matter how often these elementary blunders are pointed out by critics as well as the fan base, nothing every changes? Why don’t producers respect their core constituency and develop a few simple conventions that don’t constantly overtax the willing suspension of belief?
There are many movie genres which are perfectly coherent. For example, many SF films merely resituate the Western genre. Yet the Western genre is rarely counterintuitive. So what is it about SF that seems to invite chronic incoherence?
Let’s finish our review with a couple of other cavils before I try to draw some broader lessons. Why the ubiquitous fire fight battle in outer space? It also gets to be unspeakably tedious to have these split-second narrow escapes. How many times have we seen the clock literally ticking down to the last nanosecond before the hero rides in right in the nick of time to avert disaster and save the crew for the sequel? The shields are down, warp drive is off-line, and the fuse is within a hair’s-breadth of the bomb.
Yes, this time Data is finished for good, but, no, not really, because he lives on in B4. So his demise is emotionally risk-free.
Again, why do we so often end in a match up between the hero and the bad guy?
Now, in fairness to SF filmmakers, the critics often seem to be just as incoherent in their objections. On the one hand, you have the usual jibes about cowboys in outer space and glitzy
FX. On the other hand, critics are often quite hostile SF films that ponder existential questions and raise the intellectual level of the dialogue. They dismiss this as just so much pseudoprofound didacticism.
It is possible to offer some very banal explanations for some of these deficiencies. Producers make movies to make money. They punch up the action to sell tickets. They fall back on formulaic writing because they’re under time constraints. They make aliens looks like humans, and spacecraft look like racing cars and fighter jets, because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar and not challenge the expectations of the audience.
Maybe, but that doesn’t explain everything, and even for what it does explain, I not sure that there isn’t a deeper answer.
A teleplay often resorts to stock dramatic devices because the screenwriter is facing such a tight deadline to hand in the script. Also, in an hour-long show (minus commercial breaks), you want to deliver the goods in a hurry.
But movies are a different beast. There’s plenty of time to write a good screenplay. One doesn’t have to reach for instant gratification and the most threadbare plot devices.
Unlike moviegoers in general, many SF viewers are quite literate in the genre, with a command of popular science as well, if not a major in the field. The same often holds true for the screenwriter, director, and producers.
So it isn’t clear, from a practical or commercial standpoint, why so many movies in this genre should be so careless about the illusion of consistency. And their core constituency likes to be challenged to imagine the unimaginable.
Moreover, the predictable formulas and obvious dramatic devices are boring and irritating rather than exciting. This is one reason so many high-budget movies bomb every year. So commercial success can’t be what is driving this from start to finish.
Having found the pat answers a little too thin, let’s consider a few other explanations. One concerns the definition of drama. It is a cliche to say that conflict is the essence of drama. More precisely, conflict resolution is held to be the essence of drama. So the dramatic arc sets up the conditions of conflict, and then relieves the conflict for better or worse.
That is why so many TV series constantly return, many times a year, year after year, to dramas about cops and robbers, private-eyes, doctors, lawyers, and firemen. The simple idea is to situate the story is a naturally dramatic setting, with life-and-death struggles and their attendant emotions. Before the advent of cinema, this was the stuff of grand opera and the penny dreadfuls.
That’s the reason that Nemesis resorts to the same dramatic devices. It isn’t just because that’s such a quick and easy way to write, or because it delivers a big emotional payload at the end. Rather, that’s the reigning definition of drama, of what makes a gripping story or page-turner. And the definition controls the product regardless of whether the formula actually works or not.
This suggests that the definition itself is defective. It is too stereotypical. The average viewer becomes emotionally numb. We can always see what’s coming next, so our feelings are not engaged.
C.S. Lewis once said that you can’t begin to really enjoy a good book until you read it the second time. The first time you read it you’re too curious about what’s going to happen next and how it all comes out, to really appreciate the quality of the writing. Only after your superficial curiosity is sated are you able to sit back and savor the book at a deeper level.
I would suggest that we need to revolutionize our definition of drama. It isn’t that the old definition is wrong, but that it is much too narrow and shallow.
And this isn’t a difference between the literary and cinematic medium. Why do film buffs have favorite films? Why do they watch the same film many times? It isn’t for the high-tension drama, because that depends on an element of suspense, which depends, in turn, on an element of surprise, that is lost after the very first viewing.
And there’s another reason we need to broaden our definition, because the old fashioned, operating definition is too proscriptive and prescriptive rather than descriptive of life. For drama, in the narrow sense, is only a small part of life, and often not the most important part of life.
Life dictates to art, art doesn’t dictate to life. Art is about experience, and not about winnowing down the raw materials to fit an a priori definition. Drama, if it is to be true to life, to be a true interpretation of life, ought to be open to a broader range of experience than the amusement park or circus act. Why not take life as it comes to us, touching it up a bit, but without radical surgery?
Another answer goes to limitations inherent in the SF genre. SF has certain conventions that lend it some flexibility, in terms of what it posits to be possible. But, by the same token, SF raises expectations that are hard for SF to satisfy. It imagines other worlds, but the only world that supplies the standard of comparison is, of course, the real world, and, in particular, the provincial little world we know on earth. So SF is literally a disguised version of an utterly mundane experience. Its extraordinary vision is only an extension or projection of ordinary sights and sounds. The aliens are never very alien.
This is one reason that Star Trek is so banal. All the aliens are humanized. The Vulcans, Klingons, and androids are humanized. Space exploration becomes a cheesy version of an expedition or safari to some exotic locale on terra firma. Space explorers domesticate the headhunters and civilize the savages of other alien species.
Still another reason for the thinness of the SF genre is that, as a rule, it exemplifies a secular outlook on life. A stock theme in Star Trek is the exploration of our humanity. And how do we define the essence of humanity? In Star Trek, personal autonomy and individuality is the essence of humanity.
But even if we were agreed on this definition, where does that take us? What does it mean to be an individual? Is an individual self-defining, or does the pressure of other persons supply the mutual surfaces and shared boundaries of his own identity?
Again, what do we do with our freedom? Is freedom an end it itself, or a means to the end? In Nemesis, this is a quest to be more than we are, to be better than we are. But what is the frame of reference? What are we supposed to be reaching for? What supplies the vertical axis of aspiration along the horizontal axis of humanism? Gazing at a mirror doesn’t offer an ideal alternative—even if the ideal were obtainable.
SF is not so much a secular vision as it is a secularized vision of something else—a stripped down version, with pseudoscientific trappings, of apocalyptic eschatology—with a climactic battle between the Christ figure (e.g., Picard) and the Antichrist figure (the Borg queen, Shinzon, Khan), terminating in heaven-on-earth (the Federation) for the victors, and a lake of fire (flaming space ships) for the vanquished. The Star Wars saga follows the same pattern.
Therein lies both the dramatic power and the broken promise of the SF genre. The source of conflict and resolution is essentially religious in aspect, but in a suppressed and censored form.
The inspiration of Scripture
I. Self-Witness of Scripture:
Traditionally, the Church has confessed the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. And many Christians still take this for granted. But ever since the 19C, that position has come under increasing attack from within the very ranks of the Church. So it is important to ask ourselves, what is the theology of inspiration? And are we committed to this doctrine, or is it a ball-and-chain that is holding us back?
A. Self-conception.
The Bible identifies itself with the word of God. For example, a number of the prophetic books begin with the following phrase: "the word of the Lord came to…" (Jer 1:2; Hos 1:1; Joel 1:1; Jonah 1:1; Micah 1:1; Zeph 1:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1; Mal 1:1). This introductory and programmatic formula functions like a cover letter that applies to the internal contents of the entire collection so designated. It supplies the prophetic credentials. To take another example, the formula "thus says the Lord" occurs hundreds of times in the prophets.
B. The Prophetic Institution.
This characterization goes back to the institution of the prophetic vocation. In Deut 18:15-20 we have the formal institution of the prophetic calling. This is set over against false forms of divining God’s will (vv10-11,14). One difference is that, in pagan divination, man takes the initiative, whereas in prophecy it is God who takes the initiative by "raising" up the seer (vv15,18).
Deut 18:15-18 has both a collective and distributive aspect with reference to the prophetic guild in Israel as well as a personal and end-time aspect with reference to the Messiah. I have characterized this passage as bearing witness to the formal establishment of the prophetic vocation, for the phenomenon of prophetism antedates this institution. Noah’s malediction (Gen 9:25f.) and Jacob’s benediction (49:1 passim) were both prophetic. Abraham was also a prophet (20:7). But there are two differences:
a) To our knowledge, Moses and his successors mark the advent of a class of writing prophets. And so they serve a canonical function—among other things.
b) Israel was a theocratic nation-state with a divine law code regulating its religious and socio-political existence. The prophetic guild had an integral role in the life of the theocracy—alongside judges, monarchs and priests (cf. Deut 17:14-18:8).
In Deut 18:15-20 the prophetic institution is modeled on Moses, the paradigmatic prophet (vv.15,18-20). The basic qualification of a prophet is verbal inspiration (v18; cf. Isa 51:16a; 59:21; Jer 1:9; Ezk 3:4). A prophet is a divine mouthpiece. And it follows from this role that divine inspiration and divine initiation are correlative, for the former relies on the latter. Conversely, the corollary to a true prophet is a spokesman who presumes to speak for God without benefit of verbal inspiration (v20; cf. Jer 14:14; 23:16b,18,21,26; Ezk 13:6). A false prophet speaks without divine leave or unction. So the mark of a prophet is that he says everything God gave him to say, and only what God gave him to say. And that is what is meant by plenary verbal inspiration.
The same identification is made in the NT. An example is the citation formula employed by the author of Hebrews. He bypasses the human writer or speaker and attributes an OT statement directly to different members of the Trinity (1:5-13; 2:12-13; 3:7; 4:3-5,7; 5:5-6; 6:14; 7:21; 8:8; 10:5-7,30; 13:5). Whatever the Bible says equates with divine speech.
This sort of self-attribution is uncommon in the NT. What accounts for the contrast? There are two or three reasons:
a)The stereotypical formulae (i.e. "thus says the Lord"; "the word of the Lord came to so-and-so") were a literary convention of the prophetic genre, proper. Since only one book of the NT falls within that genre (the Apocalypse), we would not expect its systematic use elsewhere. Not coincidentally, the Apocalypse does employ prophetic formulae.
b)In some measure the NT is addressed to a Gentile audience. These literary conventions would be less meaningful to an alien audience.
c)Once the precedent has been established, verbal inspiration can be assumed. Even in the OT, not all of the prophetic books are prefaced with this formula.
Having said that, the NT has its own way of asserting inspiration. Paul goes out of his way attribute his Gospel to direct divine revelation (Gal 1-2). And he even paraphrases the traditional formula (1 Thes 2:13; cf. 1 Cor 2:13; 14:37).
But the NT also characterizes its own message by means of narrative and redemptive historical theology. When John the Baptist comes on the scene, this is quite dramatic because it marks the resumption of prophecy (Lk 1:15; 3:2; Jn 1:33)—after a hiatus of over 400 years. And when Jesus coordinates the work of the Spirit with the work of the Apostolate, this is a way of initiating his disciples into the prophetic tradition (Jn 14:26; 16:26-27; 16:12-13; 17:20; 20:21-22).
Jn 14-17 represent the NT counterpart to Deut 18:15-20. The Old Covenantal institution finds its antitypal fulfillment in the New Covenant (Acts 3:22-23), while Pentecost signals its actual inauguration (Acts 1:8). If, therefore, verbal inspiration defined the OT prophetic office, and such an institution foreshadowed the New Covenant, then that same unction can hardly apply with diminished vigor in the fullness of fulfillment.
C. Primacy of revelation.
God must take the initiative in the revelation of his nature and will. Even though redemptive events may take place in the public domain, their significance is not self-evident. It is due to the natural opacity of the divine degree that God established the prophetic guild (e.g. Isa 6:1ff.; Jer 23:18,22; Amos 3:7 ; Gal 1-2).
D. Providence.
Someone might object that my appeal is one-sided. For the Bible also identifies its message with the words of men (e.g. Jer 1:1; Amos 1:1). This is true. But we must guard against pitting the human effect against divine causality, as if these were cofactors which delimit each other. The relation is subordinate, not coordinate, for God not only forms the prophetic speech, but the prophetic speaker (Isa 49:1-5; Jer 1:5; Gal 1:15). It is true, then, that inspiration is mediate rather than immediate. The human agent is the proper object of inspiration. But that does not eliminate the principle of causal priority, for God is the author of the author. So the human side of Scripture is, itself, an expression of the divine side.
Not only so, but the whole of history is made to match up with God’s word. Predictive prophecy is a case in point (e.g. Isa 41:21-26; 42:9; 43:9; 44:6-8; 45:21; 46:10; 48:5-7). Inspiration is, itself, a subset of special providence, which is—in turn—a subset of general providence.
E. Unity of truth.
Someone might object that my appeal is selective. I have hitched my case to the prophetic institution. But we can’t generalize from that to other occupations and genres. But this objection is flawed:
i) Prophetic inspiration is not narrowly limited to forecasting the future. Moses is the prophetic paradigm. Yet precious little of the Pentateuch is prophetic in the predictive sense. Most of its contents are concerned with history and law. For that matter, Moses is also the prototypical Psalmist (Ps 90). Asaph, a lyric poet, is also called a prophet (2 Chron 29:30). Some prophets assumed the role of royal historian (e.g. Nathan, Gad, Samuel, Iddo, Ahijah, Isaiah, Shemaiah). Much of what we find in the "Prophetic" division of the OT canon is also occupied with history and law. Oracular inspiration does not, therefore, terminate on a particular literary genre or subject-matter. Direct revelation is a subdivision of inspiration. And as I’ve pointed out under (i), this institution extends to the NT as well—or rather, resumes and culminates with the NT.
ii) Prophetism was a charismatic calling and not a job description. You didn’t have to quit your day job to be a prophet. A judge (Deborah, Samuel), monarch (e.g. David), musician (Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, Miriam), priest (e.g. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jahaziel), historian (e.g. Gad, Iddo, Ahijah, Isaiah, Shemaiah), statesman (Daniel) or lowly shepherd (Amos) could each receive the prophetic enduement. James classifies Job as a prophet (Jas 5:10-11). Indeed, the only professional prophets were the corrupt court prophets (e.g. Zedekiah, Hananiah). So it would commit a category error to limit oracular inspiration by genre, medium or subject-matter.
iii) Turning this around, the mark of a false prophet is not that he makes a false forecast. Such failure would, of course, brand him a false prophet. But the negative proposition doesn’t entail a positive principle, for a false prophet can venture a true prediction (Deut 13:1ff.). Rather, what makes for a false prophet is to speak for God when God has not spoken to him.
Now it would be hard to name any author of the Bible who doesn’t assume the role of a divine spokesman. Regardless of genre, they represent God’s will to the reader. So inspiration must be a general condition of any of the sacred writers.
iv) There is, in Scripture, a general correlation between what God says and what he does. God’s word interprets his work. Put another way, God reveals his nature and will in event-media as well as word-media. Various events are a form of sign-language, and you learn how to decipher the gestures by reading his Word. As such, we cannot compartmentalize redemptive history from the general narrative of Scripture. And by the same token, we cannot abstract away the historical context in order to isolate and identify an inspired core.
v) It is instructive to see what use our Lord makes of the OT to establish a point. He assumes the historicity of Abel (Mt 23:35), Adam & Eve (Mt 19:4-5), Lot’s wife (Lk 17:32), Jonah & the whale (Mt 12:40), the Flood (Mt 24:38-39), the manna (Jn 6), the miracles of Elijah and Elisha (Lk 4:25-27), &c., and builds on these precedential examples to validate his own argument. There is no effort to compartmentalize inspiration or historicity according to genre or subject-matter. His appeal roves widely over the whole OT, taking it to be a reliable record of real events.
F. Virtuous & vicious circularity:
But even if this is an accurate summary of inspiration in its wider web of theological relations, why credit these claims? Isn’t this appeal viciously circular?
Although a bare appeal to the self-witness of Scripture would be tendentious, this is a necessary, if insufficient, condition in the doctrine of Scripture; for unless the Bible laid claim to inspiration, there would be no claim to consider. Furthermore, the object of our affirmation or denial ought to be the self-witness of Scripture, for it would be nonsensical to frame a doctrine of Scripture that doesn’t take the self-witness of Scripture as its point of reference.
Even in a court of law it is perfectly proper for a defendant to take the witness stand. And it would be entirely unfair for the jury to dismiss his testimony in advance. A defendant may be innocent and be a very compelling witness in his own defense. And who, moreover, is in a better position to explain the psychological dynamics of inspiration than the very subject of inspiration? In the nature of the case, a prophet will have the inside track on this phenomenon.
G. Self-evidence of Scripture:
By way of positive evidence, I have offered a number of arguments in my essay on "Why I Believe."I would, for now, offer three lines of evidence:
II. Self-evidence:
The above lines of evidence supply internal evidence for the inspiration of Scripture. Such an appeal is not viciously circular, for it is not predicated on passages that lay claim to inspiration, but rather, to properties of Scripture that imply its inspiration. In this sense, the inspiration of the Bible is self-evidentiary. Self-evidence and internal evidence are correlative.
A. Self-evidence & persuasion:
A common error is to treat self-evidence and persuasion as correlative as well. But that counfounds the objectivity of the evidence with the receptive state of the subject. Persuasion is person-variable. An argument may be logically compelling without being psychologically compelling. Whether an otherwise compelling argument is convincing to the subject depends on the disposition and aptitude of the subject. Many things are self-evident to a chess prodigy or math whiz that are inevident to an ordinary mortal.
B. Self-evidence & apriorism
Another common error is to limit self-evidence to truths of reason as over against truths of fact. However, an existential proposition can also be a necessary truth. Take the proposition: "If Jesse is David’s father, then David is Jesse’s son." Since fatherhood and sonship are correlative, the conclusion follows by strict implication even though the premise is existential.
III. Internal & external evidence:
What is the relation of external to internal evidence? Are they coequal? Does one verify or falsify the other?
A. Evidentiary asymmetry:
It may be contended that if external evidence is capable of corroborating the internal evidence, it’s also able to disconfirm it. In that case, Scripture is open to falsification. But I would deny that symmetry:
i) If it were a case of having more of the same kind of evidence for one proposition over against a contrary proposition, then the conclusion would have something going for it. If the only way of verifying claims of Scripture were by way of external corroboration, and the extant evidence weighed more heavily against a Scriptural proposition than for it, then that would be disconfirmatory and leave Scripture open to falsification. But since the internal and external lines of evidence do not proceed from the same database, one can’t make a direct comparison. While they may implicate a common claim, they don’t implicate each other.
ii) The self-evidence of Scripture is cogent on its own grounds. Supporting evidence or secondary counter-evidence wouldn’t render the self-evidence any more or less evident than it already is. Opposing one type of evidence to another doesn’t, by itself, undermine either for the obvious reason that it doesn’t point us in any particular direction, but would—at most—leave us at an impasse.
iii) The self-evidence of Scripture is more compelling than any secondary counter-evidence.
iv) Luke is not falsified if he were to contradict Josephus or Tacitus at some point or another, for the Bible never staked its truth-claims on satisfying that sort of condition, and there is no reason why we should expect perfect correspondence between the two. Some claims have no initial presumption in their favor derived from self-evidence or internal evidence. So they live or die based on their degree of factual correspondence. But that’s not where Scripture enters the picture.
v) Even when we’re dealing with the same kind of evidence, I would not agree that corroborative evidence and secondary counter-evidence are on a par. It is much harder to explain factual agreement between two independent witnesses if one is unreliable than to explain a conflict consistent with the veracity of one or the other. The world at large didn’t take much direct interest in the Jews and the Christians, so the vast bulk of the ancient record, even if it had survived, wouldn’t touch on the history of God’s people. We have a few rare references, as well as some incidental information that implicated aspects of their common history. Only a fraction of a fraction of the collateral materials have survived, riddled with gaps in their chronology and geography. It is nothing short of phenomenal when we are able to fix on a synchrony between any secular record and a Biblical event. How could one possibly account for that correlation unless the event took place?
In other words, a lucky coincidence between two independent records is im- measurably less likely if one witness were unreliable than if both sources accurately preserve the memory of an actual event, whereas a discrepancy doesn’t impugn the credibility of either witness unless we have reason to take the one source as our standard of comparison. So when, time and again, we can match a Biblical referent to a secular source, this is inexplicable unless the Bible is trustworthy. But a mismatch doesn’t have to satisfy the same improbabilities. If a public event occurred, it’s not surprising that two independent sources would agree on its occurrence, assuming they mention it at all, and they both survived. But if it never happened, what was the originating cause of the correspondence?
Conversely, there are numerous reasons why secular history might at times conflict with Scripture without prejudice to the veracity of Scripture. The secular witness may be a hostile witness. Or he may not accurately recall certain details. Or his expectations may have skewed his perception of the incident. Or he may be filling in the gaps with guesswork. Or he may be relying on faulty second-hand information. Or he may be lying to further his personal ambitions—or those of his boss. Or our own collation of the evidence may pivot on a number of mutually adjustable variables (e.g. stratigraphy, typology, pedology, cross-dating, sequence-dating, ascension years, coregencies, and calendrical systems). So there is no probabilistic parity between a match and a mismatch. Therefore, an appeal to circumstantiation in no way detracts from the absolute authority of Scripture.
B. Advocacy & accuracy:
Christian apologists often avoid beginning with the Bible since the critic will charge that it is hardly a disinterested witness. And so they start with corroborative evidence. I have no objection to bringing in outside witnesses. But it lets the critic off the hook all too easily when we don’t force him to come to grips with the Bible’s self-witness.
Imagine if someone were to say, "Look here, if you want to learn about life in the death camps, you can’t start with a book by Elie Wiesel, for he’s got an axe to grind. You need to read an objective account. You need to read a Nazi instead of a Jew!" Yet that’s the attitude that liberals bring to the NT. They treat it as so much propaganda. But they wouldn’t treat Wiesel’s writing as propaganda. The key question is not whether a writer has his tendenz. The key question is, What is the origin of this tendenz? Wiesel has good reason for hating the Nazis. He lived under them. The NT writers are not neutral sources of information. But that’s because they to speak from experience. To admit a bias does not imply that you must have slanted the story. The NT writers tell us that their faith is based on sight—on eyewitness observation and eyewitness testimony.
It is invalid to drive a wedge between advocacy and accuracy. For it all depends on motives. Many people apply a different standard to the Bible because it’s a religious document. But the relevant question is not, Are these writers men of faith?—but what accounts for their faith? And what accounts for their devotion to this particular faith?
IV. "Docetic" inspiration:
It is sometimes said that the high doctrine of Scripture commits the docetic heresy by virtually denying the human element in Scripture. This accusation amounts to a cute but careless comparison:
i) Our christology is only as good as the inspired source of our christology. So it is self-defeating to set christology over against inspiration.
ii) It is illicit to draw a point-by-point correspondence between the Incarnation and inspiration, for there are discontinuities between the two phenomena. The nature of redemption required the Son to assume a lowly status. He had to become a sympathetic high priest (Heb 4:15). He had to undergo abject anguish in order to consecrate himself for this office (5:8-9). He had to become subject to the liabilities of the law (Gal 3:13; 4:4-5; Phil 2:7-8). But all of this is inapposite to the purpose of revelation, which is to inform people of God’s acts, attributes and will, of the human condition and man’s duty before God, and the way of salvation. It informs not only by providing vital information that is otherwise unobtainable, as well as confirming some of our natural intuitions and observations, but also by correcting our faulty assumptions and conclusions. Not only is fallibility inessential to this informative role, but would clearly interfere with the precise purpose of Scripture.
iii) Even if, for the sake of argument, we granted a strict analogy, orthodox theology has always held Christ to be an infallible teacher, so if the comparison is to hold, the Bible must also be inerrable. Only if one subscribed to the kenotic theory would the premise (and conclusion) not obtain. But that would be a case of reacting to one christological heresy by embracing another christological heresy.
iv) When liberals frame their doctrine of Scripture in reaction to docetism, they’re committing the same offense which they (falsely) accuse conservatives of, inasmuch as they deduce their theory of inspiration from a dogmatic a priori. By contrast, the conservative doesn’t extrapolate his doctrine of inspiration from some fishy analogy but takes it straight from the self-witness of the source in question.
v) A sacred author doesn’t only get his inspiration from God; he also gets his humanity from God since he is a creature of God. And God doesn’t create him in a vacuum, but creates him in history. Creature and culture are coordinated. Our humanity and socialization can never be boundary conditions on inspiration, for the human side of Scripture is no less the product of divine agency than direct revelation. It’s all a matter of means.
V. Sources of Scripture:
A common objection to the inspiration of Scripture is the claim that Scripture can be deconstructed into a number of different sources. But problem with this claim is not that it is false, but that it attributes false sources to Scripture—by conjecturing all manner of made-up sources. We should take our cue from what the Bible has to say about its own sources of information and composition:
i) Eyewitness observation (e.g. Num 33:1-2; Jn 1:14; 19:35; 21:24; 1 Jn 1:1-3,5; Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16; 2 Pet 1:16-18).
ii) Eyewitness testimony (e.g. Lk 1:1-4; 1 Cor 15:3-7; Heb 2:3b).
iii) Special revelation (e.g. Exod 4:11-12,15-16; Deut 18:18-20; Isa 1:1; 6:1ff.; Jer 1:1ff.; Ezk 2:1f.; Hos 1;1f.; Joel 1:1; Amos 3:7-8; 7:14ff.; Obad 1:1; Mic 1:1; Nahum 1:1; Hab 1:1; Zeph 1:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1,7; Mal 1:1; Gal 1:15-16; Rev 1:1,10,19; 4:2).
iv) General revelation (e.g. 1 Kgs 4:29,32-33).
v) Prior revelation (e.g. Dan 9:2; Zech 1:4-6; 7:7,12).
vi) Divine inscripturation (e.g. Exod 31:18).
vii) Divine dictation (e.g. Exod 33:11; Num 12:8a; Deut 34:10)
viii) Extra-canonical materials (e.g. Num 21:14,27-30 [cf. Jer 48:45-56]; Josh
10:13; 2 Sam 1:17-18; Heb 11:34ff.; Jude 9,14).
ix) Personal experience (e.g. Job 42:5a; Eccl 1:14; 9:13f. Hos 1:2; 3:1-3)
All of Scripture is inspired (2 Kg 17:37; Hos 8:12; Rom 3:2; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19-21), but not all of Scripture is revealed. Direct revelation is a special case of inspiration, but inspiration is a special case of providence.
In addition, inspiration does not rule out all forms of editorial activity. But where the Bible specifies such activity, it is largely limited to a non-creative role: transcription (e.g. Jer 36:4,32; Rom 16:22; 2 Thes 2:2; 3:17; 1 Pet 5:12) and/or collation (Ps 72:20; Prov 25:1; Eccl 12:11).
Traditionally, the Church has confessed the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture. And many Christians still take this for granted. But ever since the 19C, that position has come under increasing attack from within the very ranks of the Church. So it is important to ask ourselves, what is the theology of inspiration? And are we committed to this doctrine, or is it a ball-and-chain that is holding us back?
A. Self-conception.
The Bible identifies itself with the word of God. For example, a number of the prophetic books begin with the following phrase: "the word of the Lord came to…" (Jer 1:2; Hos 1:1; Joel 1:1; Jonah 1:1; Micah 1:1; Zeph 1:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1; Mal 1:1). This introductory and programmatic formula functions like a cover letter that applies to the internal contents of the entire collection so designated. It supplies the prophetic credentials. To take another example, the formula "thus says the Lord" occurs hundreds of times in the prophets.
B. The Prophetic Institution.
This characterization goes back to the institution of the prophetic vocation. In Deut 18:15-20 we have the formal institution of the prophetic calling. This is set over against false forms of divining God’s will (vv10-11,14). One difference is that, in pagan divination, man takes the initiative, whereas in prophecy it is God who takes the initiative by "raising" up the seer (vv15,18).
Deut 18:15-18 has both a collective and distributive aspect with reference to the prophetic guild in Israel as well as a personal and end-time aspect with reference to the Messiah. I have characterized this passage as bearing witness to the formal establishment of the prophetic vocation, for the phenomenon of prophetism antedates this institution. Noah’s malediction (Gen 9:25f.) and Jacob’s benediction (49:1 passim) were both prophetic. Abraham was also a prophet (20:7). But there are two differences:
a) To our knowledge, Moses and his successors mark the advent of a class of writing prophets. And so they serve a canonical function—among other things.
b) Israel was a theocratic nation-state with a divine law code regulating its religious and socio-political existence. The prophetic guild had an integral role in the life of the theocracy—alongside judges, monarchs and priests (cf. Deut 17:14-18:8).
In Deut 18:15-20 the prophetic institution is modeled on Moses, the paradigmatic prophet (vv.15,18-20). The basic qualification of a prophet is verbal inspiration (v18; cf. Isa 51:16a; 59:21; Jer 1:9; Ezk 3:4). A prophet is a divine mouthpiece. And it follows from this role that divine inspiration and divine initiation are correlative, for the former relies on the latter. Conversely, the corollary to a true prophet is a spokesman who presumes to speak for God without benefit of verbal inspiration (v20; cf. Jer 14:14; 23:16b,18,21,26; Ezk 13:6). A false prophet speaks without divine leave or unction. So the mark of a prophet is that he says everything God gave him to say, and only what God gave him to say. And that is what is meant by plenary verbal inspiration.
The same identification is made in the NT. An example is the citation formula employed by the author of Hebrews. He bypasses the human writer or speaker and attributes an OT statement directly to different members of the Trinity (1:5-13; 2:12-13; 3:7; 4:3-5,7; 5:5-6; 6:14; 7:21; 8:8; 10:5-7,30; 13:5). Whatever the Bible says equates with divine speech.
This sort of self-attribution is uncommon in the NT. What accounts for the contrast? There are two or three reasons:
a)The stereotypical formulae (i.e. "thus says the Lord"; "the word of the Lord came to so-and-so") were a literary convention of the prophetic genre, proper. Since only one book of the NT falls within that genre (the Apocalypse), we would not expect its systematic use elsewhere. Not coincidentally, the Apocalypse does employ prophetic formulae.
b)In some measure the NT is addressed to a Gentile audience. These literary conventions would be less meaningful to an alien audience.
c)Once the precedent has been established, verbal inspiration can be assumed. Even in the OT, not all of the prophetic books are prefaced with this formula.
Having said that, the NT has its own way of asserting inspiration. Paul goes out of his way attribute his Gospel to direct divine revelation (Gal 1-2). And he even paraphrases the traditional formula (1 Thes 2:13; cf. 1 Cor 2:13; 14:37).
But the NT also characterizes its own message by means of narrative and redemptive historical theology. When John the Baptist comes on the scene, this is quite dramatic because it marks the resumption of prophecy (Lk 1:15; 3:2; Jn 1:33)—after a hiatus of over 400 years. And when Jesus coordinates the work of the Spirit with the work of the Apostolate, this is a way of initiating his disciples into the prophetic tradition (Jn 14:26; 16:26-27; 16:12-13; 17:20; 20:21-22).
Jn 14-17 represent the NT counterpart to Deut 18:15-20. The Old Covenantal institution finds its antitypal fulfillment in the New Covenant (Acts 3:22-23), while Pentecost signals its actual inauguration (Acts 1:8). If, therefore, verbal inspiration defined the OT prophetic office, and such an institution foreshadowed the New Covenant, then that same unction can hardly apply with diminished vigor in the fullness of fulfillment.
C. Primacy of revelation.
God must take the initiative in the revelation of his nature and will. Even though redemptive events may take place in the public domain, their significance is not self-evident. It is due to the natural opacity of the divine degree that God established the prophetic guild (e.g. Isa 6:1ff.; Jer 23:18,22; Amos 3:7 ; Gal 1-2).
D. Providence.
Someone might object that my appeal is one-sided. For the Bible also identifies its message with the words of men (e.g. Jer 1:1; Amos 1:1). This is true. But we must guard against pitting the human effect against divine causality, as if these were cofactors which delimit each other. The relation is subordinate, not coordinate, for God not only forms the prophetic speech, but the prophetic speaker (Isa 49:1-5; Jer 1:5; Gal 1:15). It is true, then, that inspiration is mediate rather than immediate. The human agent is the proper object of inspiration. But that does not eliminate the principle of causal priority, for God is the author of the author. So the human side of Scripture is, itself, an expression of the divine side.
Not only so, but the whole of history is made to match up with God’s word. Predictive prophecy is a case in point (e.g. Isa 41:21-26; 42:9; 43:9; 44:6-8; 45:21; 46:10; 48:5-7). Inspiration is, itself, a subset of special providence, which is—in turn—a subset of general providence.
E. Unity of truth.
Someone might object that my appeal is selective. I have hitched my case to the prophetic institution. But we can’t generalize from that to other occupations and genres. But this objection is flawed:
i) Prophetic inspiration is not narrowly limited to forecasting the future. Moses is the prophetic paradigm. Yet precious little of the Pentateuch is prophetic in the predictive sense. Most of its contents are concerned with history and law. For that matter, Moses is also the prototypical Psalmist (Ps 90). Asaph, a lyric poet, is also called a prophet (2 Chron 29:30). Some prophets assumed the role of royal historian (e.g. Nathan, Gad, Samuel, Iddo, Ahijah, Isaiah, Shemaiah). Much of what we find in the "Prophetic" division of the OT canon is also occupied with history and law. Oracular inspiration does not, therefore, terminate on a particular literary genre or subject-matter. Direct revelation is a subdivision of inspiration. And as I’ve pointed out under (i), this institution extends to the NT as well—or rather, resumes and culminates with the NT.
ii) Prophetism was a charismatic calling and not a job description. You didn’t have to quit your day job to be a prophet. A judge (Deborah, Samuel), monarch (e.g. David), musician (Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun, Miriam), priest (e.g. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jahaziel), historian (e.g. Gad, Iddo, Ahijah, Isaiah, Shemaiah), statesman (Daniel) or lowly shepherd (Amos) could each receive the prophetic enduement. James classifies Job as a prophet (Jas 5:10-11). Indeed, the only professional prophets were the corrupt court prophets (e.g. Zedekiah, Hananiah). So it would commit a category error to limit oracular inspiration by genre, medium or subject-matter.
iii) Turning this around, the mark of a false prophet is not that he makes a false forecast. Such failure would, of course, brand him a false prophet. But the negative proposition doesn’t entail a positive principle, for a false prophet can venture a true prediction (Deut 13:1ff.). Rather, what makes for a false prophet is to speak for God when God has not spoken to him.
Now it would be hard to name any author of the Bible who doesn’t assume the role of a divine spokesman. Regardless of genre, they represent God’s will to the reader. So inspiration must be a general condition of any of the sacred writers.
iv) There is, in Scripture, a general correlation between what God says and what he does. God’s word interprets his work. Put another way, God reveals his nature and will in event-media as well as word-media. Various events are a form of sign-language, and you learn how to decipher the gestures by reading his Word. As such, we cannot compartmentalize redemptive history from the general narrative of Scripture. And by the same token, we cannot abstract away the historical context in order to isolate and identify an inspired core.
v) It is instructive to see what use our Lord makes of the OT to establish a point. He assumes the historicity of Abel (Mt 23:35), Adam & Eve (Mt 19:4-5), Lot’s wife (Lk 17:32), Jonah & the whale (Mt 12:40), the Flood (Mt 24:38-39), the manna (Jn 6), the miracles of Elijah and Elisha (Lk 4:25-27), &c., and builds on these precedential examples to validate his own argument. There is no effort to compartmentalize inspiration or historicity according to genre or subject-matter. His appeal roves widely over the whole OT, taking it to be a reliable record of real events.
F. Virtuous & vicious circularity:
But even if this is an accurate summary of inspiration in its wider web of theological relations, why credit these claims? Isn’t this appeal viciously circular?
Although a bare appeal to the self-witness of Scripture would be tendentious, this is a necessary, if insufficient, condition in the doctrine of Scripture; for unless the Bible laid claim to inspiration, there would be no claim to consider. Furthermore, the object of our affirmation or denial ought to be the self-witness of Scripture, for it would be nonsensical to frame a doctrine of Scripture that doesn’t take the self-witness of Scripture as its point of reference.
Even in a court of law it is perfectly proper for a defendant to take the witness stand. And it would be entirely unfair for the jury to dismiss his testimony in advance. A defendant may be innocent and be a very compelling witness in his own defense. And who, moreover, is in a better position to explain the psychological dynamics of inspiration than the very subject of inspiration? In the nature of the case, a prophet will have the inside track on this phenomenon.
G. Self-evidence of Scripture:
By way of positive evidence, I have offered a number of arguments in my essay on "Why I Believe."I would, for now, offer three lines of evidence:
II. Self-evidence:
The above lines of evidence supply internal evidence for the inspiration of Scripture. Such an appeal is not viciously circular, for it is not predicated on passages that lay claim to inspiration, but rather, to properties of Scripture that imply its inspiration. In this sense, the inspiration of the Bible is self-evidentiary. Self-evidence and internal evidence are correlative.
A. Self-evidence & persuasion:
A common error is to treat self-evidence and persuasion as correlative as well. But that counfounds the objectivity of the evidence with the receptive state of the subject. Persuasion is person-variable. An argument may be logically compelling without being psychologically compelling. Whether an otherwise compelling argument is convincing to the subject depends on the disposition and aptitude of the subject. Many things are self-evident to a chess prodigy or math whiz that are inevident to an ordinary mortal.
B. Self-evidence & apriorism
Another common error is to limit self-evidence to truths of reason as over against truths of fact. However, an existential proposition can also be a necessary truth. Take the proposition: "If Jesse is David’s father, then David is Jesse’s son." Since fatherhood and sonship are correlative, the conclusion follows by strict implication even though the premise is existential.
III. Internal & external evidence:
What is the relation of external to internal evidence? Are they coequal? Does one verify or falsify the other?
A. Evidentiary asymmetry:
It may be contended that if external evidence is capable of corroborating the internal evidence, it’s also able to disconfirm it. In that case, Scripture is open to falsification. But I would deny that symmetry:
i) If it were a case of having more of the same kind of evidence for one proposition over against a contrary proposition, then the conclusion would have something going for it. If the only way of verifying claims of Scripture were by way of external corroboration, and the extant evidence weighed more heavily against a Scriptural proposition than for it, then that would be disconfirmatory and leave Scripture open to falsification. But since the internal and external lines of evidence do not proceed from the same database, one can’t make a direct comparison. While they may implicate a common claim, they don’t implicate each other.
ii) The self-evidence of Scripture is cogent on its own grounds. Supporting evidence or secondary counter-evidence wouldn’t render the self-evidence any more or less evident than it already is. Opposing one type of evidence to another doesn’t, by itself, undermine either for the obvious reason that it doesn’t point us in any particular direction, but would—at most—leave us at an impasse.
iii) The self-evidence of Scripture is more compelling than any secondary counter-evidence.
iv) Luke is not falsified if he were to contradict Josephus or Tacitus at some point or another, for the Bible never staked its truth-claims on satisfying that sort of condition, and there is no reason why we should expect perfect correspondence between the two. Some claims have no initial presumption in their favor derived from self-evidence or internal evidence. So they live or die based on their degree of factual correspondence. But that’s not where Scripture enters the picture.
v) Even when we’re dealing with the same kind of evidence, I would not agree that corroborative evidence and secondary counter-evidence are on a par. It is much harder to explain factual agreement between two independent witnesses if one is unreliable than to explain a conflict consistent with the veracity of one or the other. The world at large didn’t take much direct interest in the Jews and the Christians, so the vast bulk of the ancient record, even if it had survived, wouldn’t touch on the history of God’s people. We have a few rare references, as well as some incidental information that implicated aspects of their common history. Only a fraction of a fraction of the collateral materials have survived, riddled with gaps in their chronology and geography. It is nothing short of phenomenal when we are able to fix on a synchrony between any secular record and a Biblical event. How could one possibly account for that correlation unless the event took place?
In other words, a lucky coincidence between two independent records is im- measurably less likely if one witness were unreliable than if both sources accurately preserve the memory of an actual event, whereas a discrepancy doesn’t impugn the credibility of either witness unless we have reason to take the one source as our standard of comparison. So when, time and again, we can match a Biblical referent to a secular source, this is inexplicable unless the Bible is trustworthy. But a mismatch doesn’t have to satisfy the same improbabilities. If a public event occurred, it’s not surprising that two independent sources would agree on its occurrence, assuming they mention it at all, and they both survived. But if it never happened, what was the originating cause of the correspondence?
Conversely, there are numerous reasons why secular history might at times conflict with Scripture without prejudice to the veracity of Scripture. The secular witness may be a hostile witness. Or he may not accurately recall certain details. Or his expectations may have skewed his perception of the incident. Or he may be filling in the gaps with guesswork. Or he may be relying on faulty second-hand information. Or he may be lying to further his personal ambitions—or those of his boss. Or our own collation of the evidence may pivot on a number of mutually adjustable variables (e.g. stratigraphy, typology, pedology, cross-dating, sequence-dating, ascension years, coregencies, and calendrical systems). So there is no probabilistic parity between a match and a mismatch. Therefore, an appeal to circumstantiation in no way detracts from the absolute authority of Scripture.
B. Advocacy & accuracy:
Christian apologists often avoid beginning with the Bible since the critic will charge that it is hardly a disinterested witness. And so they start with corroborative evidence. I have no objection to bringing in outside witnesses. But it lets the critic off the hook all too easily when we don’t force him to come to grips with the Bible’s self-witness.
Imagine if someone were to say, "Look here, if you want to learn about life in the death camps, you can’t start with a book by Elie Wiesel, for he’s got an axe to grind. You need to read an objective account. You need to read a Nazi instead of a Jew!" Yet that’s the attitude that liberals bring to the NT. They treat it as so much propaganda. But they wouldn’t treat Wiesel’s writing as propaganda. The key question is not whether a writer has his tendenz. The key question is, What is the origin of this tendenz? Wiesel has good reason for hating the Nazis. He lived under them. The NT writers are not neutral sources of information. But that’s because they to speak from experience. To admit a bias does not imply that you must have slanted the story. The NT writers tell us that their faith is based on sight—on eyewitness observation and eyewitness testimony.
It is invalid to drive a wedge between advocacy and accuracy. For it all depends on motives. Many people apply a different standard to the Bible because it’s a religious document. But the relevant question is not, Are these writers men of faith?—but what accounts for their faith? And what accounts for their devotion to this particular faith?
IV. "Docetic" inspiration:
It is sometimes said that the high doctrine of Scripture commits the docetic heresy by virtually denying the human element in Scripture. This accusation amounts to a cute but careless comparison:
i) Our christology is only as good as the inspired source of our christology. So it is self-defeating to set christology over against inspiration.
ii) It is illicit to draw a point-by-point correspondence between the Incarnation and inspiration, for there are discontinuities between the two phenomena. The nature of redemption required the Son to assume a lowly status. He had to become a sympathetic high priest (Heb 4:15). He had to undergo abject anguish in order to consecrate himself for this office (5:8-9). He had to become subject to the liabilities of the law (Gal 3:13; 4:4-5; Phil 2:7-8). But all of this is inapposite to the purpose of revelation, which is to inform people of God’s acts, attributes and will, of the human condition and man’s duty before God, and the way of salvation. It informs not only by providing vital information that is otherwise unobtainable, as well as confirming some of our natural intuitions and observations, but also by correcting our faulty assumptions and conclusions. Not only is fallibility inessential to this informative role, but would clearly interfere with the precise purpose of Scripture.
iii) Even if, for the sake of argument, we granted a strict analogy, orthodox theology has always held Christ to be an infallible teacher, so if the comparison is to hold, the Bible must also be inerrable. Only if one subscribed to the kenotic theory would the premise (and conclusion) not obtain. But that would be a case of reacting to one christological heresy by embracing another christological heresy.
iv) When liberals frame their doctrine of Scripture in reaction to docetism, they’re committing the same offense which they (falsely) accuse conservatives of, inasmuch as they deduce their theory of inspiration from a dogmatic a priori. By contrast, the conservative doesn’t extrapolate his doctrine of inspiration from some fishy analogy but takes it straight from the self-witness of the source in question.
v) A sacred author doesn’t only get his inspiration from God; he also gets his humanity from God since he is a creature of God. And God doesn’t create him in a vacuum, but creates him in history. Creature and culture are coordinated. Our humanity and socialization can never be boundary conditions on inspiration, for the human side of Scripture is no less the product of divine agency than direct revelation. It’s all a matter of means.
V. Sources of Scripture:
A common objection to the inspiration of Scripture is the claim that Scripture can be deconstructed into a number of different sources. But problem with this claim is not that it is false, but that it attributes false sources to Scripture—by conjecturing all manner of made-up sources. We should take our cue from what the Bible has to say about its own sources of information and composition:
i) Eyewitness observation (e.g. Num 33:1-2; Jn 1:14; 19:35; 21:24; 1 Jn 1:1-3,5; Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16; 2 Pet 1:16-18).
ii) Eyewitness testimony (e.g. Lk 1:1-4; 1 Cor 15:3-7; Heb 2:3b).
iii) Special revelation (e.g. Exod 4:11-12,15-16; Deut 18:18-20; Isa 1:1; 6:1ff.; Jer 1:1ff.; Ezk 2:1f.; Hos 1;1f.; Joel 1:1; Amos 3:7-8; 7:14ff.; Obad 1:1; Mic 1:1; Nahum 1:1; Hab 1:1; Zeph 1:1; Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1,7; Mal 1:1; Gal 1:15-16; Rev 1:1,10,19; 4:2).
iv) General revelation (e.g. 1 Kgs 4:29,32-33).
v) Prior revelation (e.g. Dan 9:2; Zech 1:4-6; 7:7,12).
vi) Divine inscripturation (e.g. Exod 31:18).
vii) Divine dictation (e.g. Exod 33:11; Num 12:8a; Deut 34:10)
viii) Extra-canonical materials (e.g. Num 21:14,27-30 [cf. Jer 48:45-56]; Josh
10:13; 2 Sam 1:17-18; Heb 11:34ff.; Jude 9,14).
ix) Personal experience (e.g. Job 42:5a; Eccl 1:14; 9:13f. Hos 1:2; 3:1-3)
All of Scripture is inspired (2 Kg 17:37; Hos 8:12; Rom 3:2; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:19-21), but not all of Scripture is revealed. Direct revelation is a special case of inspiration, but inspiration is a special case of providence.
In addition, inspiration does not rule out all forms of editorial activity. But where the Bible specifies such activity, it is largely limited to a non-creative role: transcription (e.g. Jer 36:4,32; Rom 16:22; 2 Thes 2:2; 3:17; 1 Pet 5:12) and/or collation (Ps 72:20; Prov 25:1; Eccl 12:11).
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